Calabresi murder, Achille Serra: “State left him alone, killed a thousand times”

A polite policeman but left alone by the state, a man who paid for his commitment with his life and who died not only on May 17, 1972, but a thousand more times. Thus Achille Serra, former commissioner of Milan and former prefect of Rome, remembers Luigi Calabresi 50 years after the murder. His words, despite the years that have passed, are those of a friend but also of a lucid observer of those years. “Calabresi – Serra tells Adnkronos – was killed for two and a half years every day: he died not only 50 years ago, but every day he was killed on the walls, in the letters of the intellectuals (then largely repented, ed) , in the processions “. The relationship with Calabresi dates back to 1969, when the ‘super policeman’ had just arrived in Milan. “As a young agent I was put with him for a few days: since we were both Romans we immediately made friends. We got out in the car and there was a protest from the Student Movement against the American Consulate, there was a strong tension and I saw him get out of the car and I thought ‘this is crazy, now they beat him’. Instead he, with dialogue, managed to calm the spirits. He has been a beacon throughout my life, one of my points of reference in my career. I only have positive memories of him, of affection and great esteem “. He remembers every moment of the murder of Calabresi in via Cherubini, a side street of Corso Vercelli. “As soon as we arrived we understood immediately. They all arrived crying, the commissioner Allitto and I climbed the stairs to go and tell his wife and I remember the tears of this hard man and I remember the pride of his wife, an extraordinary woman, who did not start hysterical scenes “. A crime that shook Milan – “we carried the coffin from the police station to the church of San Marco, 100 meters in all” – and which has its culprits on which Serra prefers not to comment. “The figure of the policeman ends when that of the magistrate begins”, although the man still feels “a great pain for the death of a friend and a teacher”. A murder that perhaps could have been avoided after the tensions arising from the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli. “I asked Calabresi ‘why don’t you go? You have a wife and children’ and he replied that I too would have replied: ‘why do I have to go, what have I done?’. I terribly blame the government at the time that I didn’t he had, or perhaps he did not want to, it is not up to me to judge, to decide on a transfer of office. Not only that, poor Calabresi did not even have an escort “, remembers Serra with regret.