Adriano Sofri

Adriano Sofri (Trieste, 1 August 1942) is an Italian intellectual, a journalist and a writer. Former leader of the autonomist movement Lotta Continua ("Continuous Struggle"') in the 1960s, he was arrested in 1988 and sentenced to 22 years of prison, having been found guilty of instigating the murder of police officer Luigi Calabresi. Sofri, and the others comrades convicted with him, have always proclaimed their innocence. The charges against them rested on the testimony of a pentito ("collaborator of justice"), Leonardo Marino. While in prison, Sofri wrote for various newspapers, such as Il Foglio, La Repubblica, and Panorama.

Adriano Sofri was born 1 August 1942 in Trieste.

On 12 December 1969 a bomb exploded at the Piazza Fontana in Milan. Among those brought in for questioning was militant anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli. On 15 December 1969, while in police custody Pinelli fell from a fourth floor window of the police building in Milan. The policemen present in the interrogation room claimed that Pinelli committed suicide, but many leftist circles believed him to have been murdered. An initial investigation in 1970 ruled Pinelli's death an accident. (A subsequent inquiry in 1975 concurred, holding that Pinelli had fainted due to an "active illness").

Despite the fact that it was established that Calabresi had not been in the room at the time of Pinelli's death, he became the target of an extensive media campaign led by the Lotta Continua newspaper and the weekly L'Espresso because of his alleged involvement in Pinelli's death. On 15 December 1969, the Lotta Continua newspaper directed by Sofri explicitly claimed that Calabresi had to be "shot dead". The press campaign against Calabresi continued for the next two years.

On the morning of 17 May 1972 Calabresi was shot and killed outside his home. Members of Lotta Continua were considered to be the prime suspects.

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