Il Filmato della Fine di Mussolini?

[antoninus]

C'e` l'hanno ancora gli americani?

Lawyers for Guido Mussolini said footage of the death of his grandfather, dictator Benito Mussolini, has been found in the United States.

The lawyers told a news conference Friday the footage will be in Italy soon, ANSA News Agency reported.

Attorney Luciano Randazzo said the two-and-a-half minute film, kept in Washington as part of a private archive, shows "the last seconds" of the lives of Mussolini and his lover Claretta Petacci, before partisans shot them April 28, 1945. The footage did not make clear who specifically shot Mussolini, ANSA reported.

Randazzo said neither he nor 69-year-old Guido Mussolini had seen the film, but that authorities had described its contents.

Mussolini's death has been the subject of inquiry for decades.His grandson told reporters he thinks historians have produced at least 19 different endings to his grandfather's life.

He has asked the village of Como, near where his grandfather died, to open an inquiry into the sequence of events.

There was no immediate confirmation on the inquiry, but ANSA reported that officials in Como have cited an amnesty issued by the Italian government in 1946, applying to all crimes committed in the war.

Article Source: http://www.share.onlypunjab.com

[Serendipity]

Così, vedendolo, finirebbe la sessantennale questione su chi gli ha realmente sparato...

[RexCronos]

Clamoroso!!

[antoninus]

Sei mesi di silenzio dopo la "notizia"...

Perche`?

[antoninus]

Mussolini Grandson Digs Into Dictator's Past, Opens Old Wounds

By Anthony DiPaola

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Who really killed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini? His grandson Guido is determined to answer the question, at the risk of reigniting political divisions over the country's fascist past.

More than six decades after Mussolini was shot on the shores of Lake Como, Guido has asked an Italian court to open a criminal probe into who decided that ``Il Duce'' should be executed on April 28, 1945. He took the legal action after discovering the existence of a three-minute film of the shooting almost a year ago.

``I want to know who, what, where, when and why,'' said Guido Mussolini, who was 7 years old when the dictator was killed. His father was Il Duce's first son, Vittorio Mussolini, a film critic and producer who died in 1997.

Mussolini, widely assumed to have been killed by resistance fighters in the final days of World War II, remains the subject of conspiracy theories, and his 22-year rule still sparks debate in Italy. Some conservatives view Mussolini as a benign dictator, while many on the left see his execution as a just act against the leader of a repressive regime.

There are at least 19 versions of Il Duce's death, Guido Mussolini said. He argues that his grandfather, as a head of state, should have been handed over to the Allies for prosecution and not executed.

Decision on Prosecuting

Prosecutors in the northern Italian city of Como are scheduled to decide next week whether to open a criminal investigation, said Luciano Randazzo, Mussolini's lawyer.

Mussolini, 69, a retired cheesemaker who lives in Riano, north of Rome, is trying to persuade the person who has the execution film to turn it over to him, preferably for free. The price being sought is too high, he said. He declined to identify the seller except to say it's someone in Washington.
The film ``shows what we wanted to see,'' said Randazzo, who said he has viewed it.

Alessandra Mussolini, 44, said she doesn't support her cousin Guido's quest for more information about their grandfather's death.

``The execution was unjust,'' said the former actress, a member of the European Parliament. She quit the National Alliance party after its leader, Gianfranco Fini, referred to fascism as ``an absolute evil.''

``There should be a political reflection on what happened, but I'm completely against going ahead with this case,'' she said.

Alexander Stille, a professor at Columbia University in New York, says the legal move is ``just a way to find a distraction from the reality of Mussolini's image.'' Stille wrote the introduction to the English translation of `My Father Il Duce'' (Kales Press, 180 pages, $26.95), a memoir by Mussolini's youngest son, Romano, who died a year ago.

`Revisionist' History

``The desire by family members to create questions and controversies about a situation like this is an attempt to create a revisionist version of history that whitewashes a person's image,'' Stille said.

Il Duce was elected prime minister in 1922. He took absolute power after Fascist thugs murdered an opposition politician. Mussolini later allied Italy with Nazi Germany and followed Adolf Hitler to war in 1940. The Fascists suppressed freedoms by imprisoning opponents and passed racial laws that helped the Nazis deport, imprison and murder Italian Jews.

Resistance fighter Walter Audisio, nicknamed Colonnello Valerio, shot Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci with a submachine gun, according to the generally accepted version of the dictator's death. Audisio, who claimed responsibility for the execution in the book ``In Nome del Popolo Italiano,'' acted on authority of the partisan National Liberation Committee. Audisio died in 1973 and the book was published posthumously in 1975.

Other Claims

Bruno Giovanni Lonati, a 24-year-old partisan at the end of the war, wrote in the 1994 book ``Quel 28 Aprile'' that he shot Mussolini in the chest with two bursts from a submachine gun. A British secret-service agent, known only as John, was sent to ensure that Mussolini died, Lonati wrote. Lonati's publisher, Mursia Editore, said it has no information on whether Lonati is still alive or how to reach him.

The British wanted Mussolini killed to stop him from leaking details of his relationship with Prime Minister Winston Churchill during a potential trial for war crimes, writer and journalist Bruno Vespa wrote in a 2004 book, ``Storia d'Italia da Mussolini a Berlusconi.''

Another theory holds that Audisio claimed responsibility to help avoid a political backlash for high-ranking members of the Italian Communist Party. Luigi Longo, later a secretary-general of the party, and Sandro Pertini, who went on to become a president of Italy, were both on the partisan committee that decided on the execution, Vespa wrote.

``The country has to get in touch with its own past,'' and discussions of Mussolini's fate can help with that, said Franco Pavoncello, a political science professor and dean at Rome's John Cabot University. Still, seeking to assign blame through the courts isn't going to change anything, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Rome at adipaola@bloomberg.net .