Il Piccolo
- The decisions of the Council of Ministers
- The Grand Council against isolated actions
- Police confino
Il Piccolo's front page of 6 November 1926 carried the Fascist government's response to the 31 October attempt on Mussolini in Bologna. It printed articles of the new law for the defence of the State, under which citizens and foreigners who commit its offences abroad are tried in the Kingdom even if already tried elsewhere, and judges may replace the death penalty with life imprisonment. It reported the Grand Council's statement on the nation's indignation and its call for local reprisals to stop, and it explained how police confino, until then used for common crimes, was being extended to political offences, with island penal colonies at Pantelleria, Tremiti, Ustica and Lipari.
Translation
The decisions of the Council of Ministers
Art. 6) A citizen or a foreigner who commits in foreign territory one of the offences provided for in the preceding articles is punished under this law and tried in the Kingdom, even though he has already been tried abroad. In the case of a conviction in absentia of a citizen, the provisions of the preceding article apply. Art. 7) For the offences provided for in this law, when there are circumstances which under the Penal Code entail a reduction of the penalty, the judge has the power to substitute life imprisonment for the death penalty and to reduce the other penalties by no more than one third.
The Grand Council against isolated actions
The Grand Council, through the report made first by the Head of the Government and then by the general secretary on the state of feeling that had arisen in the Nation at the announcement of the attempt of 31 October, notes the profound emotion and the sense of keen indignation by which the whole Italian people has been struck. Passing to the examination of the episodes of reprisal carried out in certain localities, while considering that they were the inevitable expression of indignation and grief, the Grand Council has taken note of the instructions already issued by the secretary of the Party for them to cease, as in fact they have already ceased, so as to allow the firm and rigid …
Police confino
As regards the penalty of confino, this, as the word itself explains, entails forbidding a person to reside in the Commune of his residence or domicile, with the aim of placing him in a condition where he can no longer do harm. Until now confino existed for common crimes. With the new provisions approved this morning by the Council, which will be put into effect promptly, the penalty of confino is extended to political offences. Confino ranges from a simple precautionary measure, consisting of a ban on staying in the Commune of residence and compulsory assignment to a Commune designated by the Ministry of the Interior, to a more serious measure consisting of sending the guilty party to one of the four penal colonies, which, as is well known, are: Pantelleria, Tremiti, Ustica and Lipari.
Context
From cabinet draft to Law no. 2008 of 1926
The articles printed under the Council of Ministers' decisions belong to the package known as the leggi fascistissime, a series of measures issued in 1925 and 1926 that began turning the Kingdom of Italy's legal order into the Fascist regime. The draft whose Articles 6 and 7 the paper reproduced was enacted as Law no. 2008 of 25 November 1926, which created the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State. Article 7's reference to the death penalty is significant: the legal historian Guido Neppi Modona notes that capital punishment for political crimes was already provided by that special law before the 1930 penal code extended it to the gravest common crimes. Parliament was being reshaped in the same weeks, as the Chamber of Deputies, in its sitting of 9 November 1926, declared the Aventine deputies' seats forfeited. The paper presented the articles as cabinet deliberations; they gained legal force only with the law dated 25 November.
The Bologna attempt of 31 October and the Grand Council on reprisals
The 'attempt of 31 October' in the Grand Council's statement was a shot fired at Mussolini as he rode in an open car through Bologna, after which a 15-year-old boy, Anteo Zamboni, was lynched. The terrorism scholar J. Bowyer Bell later wrote that the boy was likely innocent and that the affair was either a put-up job or a plot among Fascists, so the shooter's identity remains disputed. It was the third attempt of 1926, after Violet Gibson's pistol shot on 7 April and Gino Lucetti's bomb on 11 September, and it led to laws creating Mussolini's secret police. Against this background the Grand Council's wording matters: it called the reprisals the 'inevitable expression' of indignation and grief while recording orders to stop them, a formula that excused the violence it was halting. The council that issued this statement acquired formal constitutional status only with the law of 9 December 1928, which made it the supreme constitutional authority of the Kingdom.
How police confino worked and who decided it
The paper says confino had existed for common crimes; its lineage reaches back to domicilio coatto, a measure introduced by the Pica law of 1863. The new public-security code, Royal Decree no. 1848 of 6 November 1926, absorbed it as confino di polizia and applied it to anti-fascists, and the same decree empowered prefects to dissolve all parties, associations and organisations acting against the regime. Confino was enforced without trial, although judicial bodies carried out a review. In the procedure, the questore reported a suspect to the prefect, who referred the case to a provincial commission that he himself chaired. Terms ran to a maximum of five years, which could be renewed. The paper calls confino a penalty, but Neppi Modona classes it as an administrative measure and places it, together with the Special Tribunal, among the systems outside ordinary criminal justice used against the political opposition.
The island colonies and the 262 confino sites
The paper named four island colonies: Pantelleria, Tremiti, Ustica and Lipari. The system spread well beyond them, with about 262 confino colonies operating at different times between 1926 and 1943, most of them in southern Italy, and the islands used most heavily included Ventotene alongside Pantelleria, Ustica and Tremiti. Ustica held prominent opponents including Ferruccio Parri, Carlo and Nello Rosselli, Randolfo Pacciardi, Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci. The per-colony figures usually cited are averages of the people constantly present in each colony, not counts of everyone who passed through, so they cannot yield a total of those confined after November 1926.
Original
Le deliberazioni del Consiglio dei ministri
Art. 6) Il cittadino o lo straniero che commette in territorio estero uno dei delitti preveduti dai precedenti articoli, è punito a norma della presente legge e giudicato nel Regno, benchè sia stato già giudicato all'estero. In caso di condanna in contumacia di un cittadino, si applicano le disposizioni dell'art. precedente. Art. 7) Per i delitti preveduti nella presente legge quando concorrano circostanze che a termini del Codice Penale importino una diminuzione di pena, il giudice ha facoltà di sostituire alla pena di morte l'ergastolo e di diminuire le altre pene non oltre il terzo.
Il Gran Consiglio contro le azioni isolate
Il Gran Consiglio, attraverso la relazione fatta dal Capo del Governo prima dal segretario generale poi, circa lo stato d'animo che si era determinato nella Nazione all'annunzio dell'attentato del 31 ottobre, constata la pronda emozione ed il senso di vivo sdegno dai quali tutto il popolo italiano è stato colpito. Passando all'esame degli episodi di rappresaglia compiuti in talune località, pur considerando che essi sono stati l'inevitabile espressione dell'indignazione e del dolore, il Gran Consiglio ha preso atto delle disposizioni già impartite dal segretario del Partito perchè essi cessassero, come sono in realtà già cessati, così da consentire la ferma e rigida
Il confino di polizia
Per quanto si riferisce alla pena del confino, questa, come spiega la stessa parola, implica il divieto ad una persona di risie dere nel Comune di residenza o di domicilio allo scopo di metterla in condizione di non poter più nuocere. Presentemente il confino esisteva per i reati comuni. Con le nuove disposizioni approvate stamane dal Consiglio e che entreranno sollecitamente in attuazione, la pena di confino viene estesa ai reati politici. Il confino va da una semplice misura precauzionale che consta nel divieto di soggiorno nel Comune di residenza e nella destinazione obbligatoria in un Comune designato dal Ministero degli Interni, a una misura più grave che consiste nell'invio del colpevole in una del'e quattro colonie penali che come è noto sono: Pantelleria, Tremiti, Ustica e Lipari.
Source: Source: Internet Archive