Francesco Maurizio Cossiga ( 1928 – 2010)Page at Senate website .Profile of Francesco Cossiga was an Italian politician who served as the president of Italy from 1985 to 1992. A member of Christian Democracy, he was Prime Minister of Italy from 1979 to 1980;Biografia – Francesco Cossiga leading a centre-right government.Political Parties and Coalitional Behaviour in Italy By Geoffrey Pridham, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2013, originally publishe in 1988, P.49 Cossiga is widely considered one of the most prominent and influential politicians of the First Italian Republic.
Cossiga served as a minister on several occasions, most notably as Italian Minister of the Interior. In that position, he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. Due to his repressive approach to public protests, he was described as a strongman and labelled "Iron Minister".I consigli di Cossiga alla Polizia "Prima una vittima, poi mano dura" He was in office at the time of the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, and resigned as the interior minister when Aldo Moro was found dead in May 1978. Cossiga was the prime minister during the 1980 Bologna station massacre. Before his political career, he was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari.
Early life Francesco Cossiga was born in Sassari on 26 July 1928, to a republican and anti-fascist middle-bourgeois family. His parents were Giuseppe Cossiga and Maria "Mariuccia" Zanfarino. He was the second-degree cousin of brothers Enrico and Giovanni Berlinguer (whose parents were Mario Berlinguer and Maria "Mariuccia" Loriga) because their respective maternal grandfathers, Antonio Zanfarino and Giovanni Loriga, were half-brothers on their mother's side. Mio cugino Berlinguer: Cossiga racconta un leader (Cossiga talking about Enrico Berlinguer in an interview to Gian Antonio Stella – Corriere della Sera, 10 June 2004) Although his last name is commonly pronounced (with the stress falling on the second syllable), the original pronunciation is (with the stress falling on the first syllable), italianized as . His surname in Sardinian and Sassarese means "Corsica", likely pointing to the family's origin.
At the age of sixteen, he graduated, three years in advance, at the classical lyceum Domenico Alberto Azuni. The following year he joined in the Christian Democracy, and three years later, at only 19 years old, he graduated in law and started a university career as a professor of constitutional law at the faculty of jurisprudence of the University of Sassari.
During his period at the university, he became a member of the Catholic Federation of University Students (FUCI), becoming the association's leader for Sassari.Chiesa e società a Sassari dal 1931 al 1961
Beginnings of his political career After the 1958 general election Cossiga was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time, representing the constituency of Cagliari–Sassari.
In February 1966 he became the youngest Undersecretary of the Ministry of Defence, in the government of Aldo Moro. In this role he had to face the aftermath of Piano Solo, an envisaged plot for an Italian coup d'état requested by then President Antonio Segni, two years before.Morte di un picconatore
From November 1974 to February 1976 Cossiga was Minister of Public Administration in Moro's fourth government.
Minister of the Interior On 12 February 1976, Cossiga was appointed Minister of the Interior, by Prime Minister Moro. During his term he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. Cossiga has been often described as a strongman and labeled "iron minister", for repressing public protests.Cossiga a Manganelli: «Lasciare che gli studenti facciano danni, poi una dura repressione»Terrorizzare e reprimere. Il terrorismo come strumento repressivo in perenne estensione Moreover, during his tenure his surname was often stylized as "Koiga", using the SS symbol.Da Kossiga con la K a picconatore: vita del Dc più anomalo
1977 protests and riots
In 1977, the city of Bologna was the scene of violent street clashes. In particular, on 11 March a militant of the far-left organization Lotta Continua, Francesco Lorusso, was killed by a gunshot to the back (probably fired by a policeman), when police dispersed protesters against a mass meeting of Communion and Liberation, which was being held that morning at the university. This event served as a detonator for a long series of clashes with security forces for two days, which affected the entire city of Bologna.Gino Moliterno, Encyclopedia of contemporary Italian culture (annotated), CRC Press, 2000, , p 800 Cossiga sent armoured vehicles into the university area and other hot spots of the city to quell what he perceived as guerrilla warfare. Clashes with the police caused numerous casualties among people who got caught up in the riots, including uninvolved locals. No old leftist party, except the Youth Socialist Federation, led by local secretary Emilio Lonardo, participated at the funeral of the student Lorusso, showing the dramatic split between the movement and the historical left parties. [Source?]
Turin was also the scene of bloody clashes and attacks. On 1 October 1977, after a procession had started with an attack on the headquarters of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a group of militants of Lotta Continua reached a downtown bar, L'angelo azzurro (The Blue Angel), frequented by young right-wing activists. They threw two Molotov cocktails, and Roberto Crescenzio, a totally apolitical student, died of burns. The perpetrators of the murder were never identified. Lotta Continua leader Silvio Viale called it a "tragic accident". [Source?]
Another innocent victim of the riots of that year was Giorgiana Masi, who was killed in Rome by a gunshot during an event organized by the Radical Party to celebrate the third anniversary of the victory in the referendum on divorce. As the perpetrators of the murder remained unknown, the movement attributed the responsibility of the crime to police officers in plain clothes, who were immortalized at that time dressed in clothing of the style of young people of the movement. [Source?]
Kidnapping of Aldo Moro
Cossiga was in office at the time of the kidnapping and murder of the Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro by the Marxist-Leninist extreme-left terrorist group Red Brigades. On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day on which the new cabinet led by Giulio Andreotti was supposed to have undergone a confidence vote in the Italian Parliament, the car of Moro, former prime minister and then president of DC, was assaulted by a group of Red Brigades terrorists in Via Fani in Rome. Firing automatic weapons, the terrorists killed Moro's bodyguards, (two Carabinieri in Moro's car and three policemen in the following car) and kidnapped him. [Source?]
Cossiga formed immediately two "crisis committees". The first one was a technical-operational-political committee, chaired by Cossiga himself and, in his absence, by undersecretary Nicola Lettieri. Other members included the supreme commanders of the Italian Police Forces, of the Carabinieri, the Guardia di Finanza, the recently named directors of SISMI and SISDE (respectively, Italy's military and civil intelligence services), the national secretary of CESIS (a secret information agency), the director of UCIGOS and the police prefect of Rome. The second one was an information committee, including members of CESIS, SISDE, SISMI and SIOS, another military intelligence office.
A third unofficial committee was created which never met officially, called the comitato di esperti ("committee of experts"). Its existence was not disclosed until 1981, by Cossiga himself, in his interrogation by the Italian Parliament's Commission about the Moro affair. He omitted to reveal the decisions and the activities of the committee however. This committee included: Steve Pieczenik, a psychologist of the anti-terrorism section of the US State Department, and notable Italian criminologists. Pieczenik later declared that there were numerous leaks about the discussions made at the committee, and accused Cossiga.
However, on 9 May 1978 Moro's body was found in the trunk of a Renault 4 in Via Caetani after 55 days of imprisonment, during which Moro was submitted to a political trial by the so-called "people's court" set up by the Brigate Rosse and the Italian government was asked for an exchange of prisoners. Despite the common interpretation, the car location in Via Caetani was not halfway between the locations of the national offices of DC and of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Rome. After two days, Cossiga resigned as Minister of the Interior. According to Italian journalist Enrico Deaglio, Cossiga, to justify his lack of action, "accused the leaders of CGIL and of the Communist Party of knowing where Moro was detained". Cossiga was also accused by Moro himself, in his letters who wrote during his detention, saying that "his blood will fall over him".
Prime Minister of Italy
One year after Moro's death and the subsequent Cossiga's resignation as Interior Minister, he was appointed Prime Minister of Italy. He led a government coalition composed of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Democratic Socialists, Republicans and Liberals.
Bologna massacre
Cossiga was head of the government during the Bologna massacre, a terrorist bombing of the Bologna Central Station on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 200. The attack was attributed to the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nucleus), which always denied any involvement; other theories have been proposed, especially in correlation with the strategy of tension.Carlo Lucarelli, Blu notte La strage di Bologna .
Francesco Cossiga first assumed the explosion to have been caused by an accident (the explosion of an old boiler located in the basement of the station). Nevertheless, soon the evidence gathered on site of the explosion made it clear that the attack constituted an act of terrorism. L'Unità, the newspaper of the Communist Party on 3 August already attributed responsibility for the attack to neo-fascists. Later, in a special session to the Senate, Cossiga supported the theory that neofascists were behind the attack, "unlike leftist terrorism, which strikes at the heart of the state through its representatives, black terrorism prefers the massacre because it promotes panic and impulsive reactions."
Later, according to media reports in 2004, taken up again in 2007,"Il giallo della strage di Bologna. Ecco le prove della pista araba" , il Giornale, 22 October 2007 . Cossiga, in a letter addressed to Enzo Fragala, leader of the National Alliance section in the Mitrokhin Committee, suggested Palestinian involvement of George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Separate group of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal"."Strage Bologna: Cossiga, forse atto del terrorismo arabo" In addition, in 2008 Cossiga gave an interview to the BBC in which it reaffirmed his belief that the massacre would not be attributable to black terrorism, but to an "incident" of Palestinian resistance groups operating in Italy. He declared also being convinced of the innocence of Francesca Mambro and Giuseppe Valerio Fioravanti, the two neo-fascist terrorists accused of the massacre."La strage di Bologna, fu un incidente della resistenza palestinese", Corriere della Sera, 8 July 2008 ."Our World: The convenient war against the Jews" , Jerusalem Post, 6 October 2008. The PFLP has always denied responsibility.Former Italian Prime Minister fabricates lies again , Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Resignation In October 1980, Cossiga resigned as Prime Minister after the rejection of the annual budget bill by the Italian Parliament.Il Governo Cossiga