December 12th

On December 12th, 1969, a bomb went off at the Piazza Fontana in Milan that killed 16 people and injured 84. Railway worker and anarchist activist Giuseppe Pinelli was picked up, with other anarchists, for questioning regarding the attack. He was held and interrogated for three days, longer than Italian law specified that people could be held without seeing a judge. Just before midnight on December 15, 1969, Pinelli was seen falling to his death from a fourth-floor window of the Milan police station. Although officially deemed a suicide, the reporter who watched the fall from the street maintained that he was pushed. Three police officers interrogating Pinelli were put under investigation in 1971 for murder, but charges were dropped for lack of evidence.