Aldo Semerari (; 8 May 1923 − March or 1 April 1982) was an Italian criminologist, anthropologist and psychiatrist. He was also a noted neo-fascist, who was suspected of complicity in the terror attack that killed 85 people at Bologna railway station in 1980.
Background and career Semerari was born on 8 May 1923, in Martina Franca, Apulia. He studied medicine at the University of Padua, specialising in psychiatry. Corrado De Rosa, La mente nera (Rome: Sperling & Kupfer, 2014), p. 1. During the 1970s he was Professor of Criminal Anthropology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and a director of the university's Institute of Forensic Psychopathology.Francis Hodgson, Who's Who in Science in Europe: a Reference Guide to European Scientists (Guernsey: Hodgson, 1978), p. 2879. His academic interests primarily involved the study of sadomasochism and sexual crimes. He was also the first to translate the works of the German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers into Italian. 'L’orribile fine di Aldo Semerari, il criminologo «nero»', taken from an article in Il Mattino, 2 April 1982. Il Progetto Spazio70. Retrieved 9 February 2022.
In 1962, Semerari came to public attention when he was asked to provide a psychiatric analysis of the writer and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was then on trial for attempting to steal two thousand lire from a petrol station. In his report, Semerari pronounced Pasolini to be a "sexual deviant" and "instinctive psychopath", whose voyeurism and criminal tendencies were stimulated by his communist affiliations. Semerari considered Pasolini's refusal to acknowledge his deviancy as further evidence of mental instability, declaring that Pasolini was "so deeply abnormal that he accepts his abnormality in full consciousness, to the point of being unable to judge it as such."Psychiatric Notes by the Prof. Aldo Semerari of the University of Rome on the writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, 21 June 1962, quoted in both Barth David Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem (New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 386; and Jean-Claude Klein, 'Le lynchage d'un pédé', Le Berdache, Issue 6 (December 1979 − January 1980), p. 40. Having neglected to interview Pasolini in person, Semerari did not succeed in getting his evidence accepted by the court, but his report's findings were published before the trial ended and repeated uncritically by sections of the popular press.Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem, p. 386. The controversial nature of Semerari's evaluation of Pasolini did not dent his status as a leading consultant to the criminal courts in Rome, and throughout the following two decades his psychiatric evaluations continued to influence judicial rulings.
In the 1970s, Semerari was also involved in making films himself, developing a partnership with the director and screenwriter Brunello Rondi. He and Rondi wrote the screenplay for the film Valeria Inside and Outside (Valeria dentro e fuori, 1972), an explicit account of a young woman's neurotic Freudian fantasies and sexual frustrations, and he received a further screenwriting credit for Rondi's sexploitation film Sex Life in a Women's Prison (Prigione di donne, 1974).Roberto Curti, 'Rediscovering Brunello Rondi', Offscreen, Volume 15, Issue 12 (December 2011). Retrieved 22 June 2021.
Neo-fascist activity In his youth Semerari was a communist ideologue, who belonged to the Stalinist faction of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; PCI). Corrado De Rosa recounts in his book La mente nera that Semerari cultivated a partisan image while still in Martina Franca, frequently wearing a fur hat, leather jacket, red star and pistol holster, and was a member of a gang that placed a bomb in the house of the local Christian Democrat member of the Constituent Assembly, for which he received a short spell in jail in 1946 before benefitting from a general amnesty.De Rosa, La mente nera, p. 1. Semerari later spent time in Prague as a cadre, having specifically requested that he be sent there for training.De Rosa, La mente nera, p. 2. In 1954, however, he suddenly pivoted to the extreme right, becoming a convert to national socialism.Alessandro Silj, 'Political thriller in the best grand guignol style', Irish Times, 8 April 1982, p. 8. Several news outlets later reported that his home contained a substantial collection of Nazi and Fascist memorabilia, including military uniforms and photographs of Hitler and Mussolini, which friends and associates dismissed in public as merely a hobby.'Dons of war', Economist, 6 September 1980, pp. 52-3.David Willey, 'Professor is accused of masterminding massacre', Observer, 31 August 1980, p. 8.George Armstrong, 'Italian officials name right-wing suspects after bomb outrage', Guardian, 30 August 1980, p. 6. Although never a prominent figure within the neo-fascist movement, by the late 1970s Semerari had become one of the leaders of a small group of ultra-right intellectuals and agitators called "Let's Build Action" (Costruiamo l'azione).Franco Ferraresi, Threats to Democracy: the Radical Right in Italy after the War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 157. He was also a member of the Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge, reputedly maintaining links with SISMI, the Italian military intelligence agency. Luigi Cipriani, The Ustica-Libya case. 1990 (excerpts). fondazionecipriani.it. Retrieved 28 June 2022.
As John Dickie explains, Semerari's main significance lay in his position at the intersection of subversive political activity and organised crime.John Dickie, Mafia Brotherhoods: Camorra, Mafia, 'ndrangheta: the Rise of the Honoured Societies (London: Sceptre, 2012), p. 444. He was convinced that establishing partnerships with criminal gangs would accelerate the strategia della tensione (literally, the "strategy of tension"), the process by which "revolutionary" activity would exacerbate public discontent and bring about the fall of the democratic state, and to this end he had by the late 1970s cultivated close ties with the recently established Roman criminal syndicate, the Banda della Magliana, whose meetings were often organised by him at his summer villa in Rieti. Carlo Lucarelli, Storie di bande criminali, di mafie e di persone oneste: dai Misteri d'Italia di Blu notte (Turin: Einaudi, 2008), p. 143. Alongside the former Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI) parliamentarian Fabio De Felice and history teacher Paolo Signorelli, Semerari also hosted a number of seminars with various far-right militants at around this time, which Jeffrey Bale suggests were convened to discuss a "new decentralized and self-financing terrorist strategy", modelled on the activities of the Red Brigades, that could "consolidate the remnants of various extremist groups" in the face of official state crackdowns and the flight of several neo-fascist leaders to "safer havens abroad".Jeffrey Bale, 'The "Black" Terrorist International: Neo-Fascist Paramilitary Networks and the "Strategy of Tension" in Italy, 1968–1974', Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley (1994), p. 427. Bale notes that the seminars' participants frequently disagreed about which was the best route to achieve their goals, with Semerari and De Felice emerging as the leaders of a "traditionalist" faction that eschewed direct revolutionary action in favour of constructing a logistical base that would bring together like-minded militant groups and individuals.Bale, '"Black" Terrorist International', p. 428.
In exchange for financial support for his organisation, Semerari helped the members of various criminal organisations evade imprisonment when they were arrested, devising strategies for coping with police interrogation and writing reports that sought to establish either innocence or lack of culpability, which were usually supported by a fraudulent diagnosis of mental infirmity.Pino Arlacchi refers to a diagnosis nefariously used by Semerari known as Ganser syndrome, defined as an illness found in people who have become so accustomed to feigning madness that they end up really going mad. See Pino Arlacchi, Mafia Business: the Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1986), p. 147. In addition to the Banda della Magliana, Semerari made similar deals with both Raffaele Cutolo's New Organised Camorra (Nuova Camorra Organizzata; NCO) and one of Cutulo's main rivals, the New Family (Nuova Famiglia; NF) headed by Carmine Alfieri. 'Il boss Ammaturo confessa: 40 avvisi', Corriere della Sera, 24 May 1994. {subscription required}. Franco Ferraresi later concluded that Semerari's efforts in keeping criminals away from severe punishment bore fruit, as his diagnoses were "critical in obtaining lenient terms for many of them."Ferraresi, Threats to Democracy, p. 175.
In August 1980, Semerari was one of a trio of neo-fascist pedagogues − the other two were Signorelli and Claudio Mutti − arrested on suspicion of involvement in the bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station earlier that month, which claimed the lives of 85 people and wounded over 200 more. Semerari was, according to The Observer, held by the police at his home in Rieti and taken to a top-security prison for further interrogation. Pino Rauti, a leading figure on the neo-fascist right and a friend of Signorelli, announced in a press statement that the accusations regarding the culpability of Semerari and the other detainees were "fabricated by members of the Italian secret services to discredit the political right."Henry Tanner, 'In Italy, Rightists Join Leftists in the Reign of Terror', New York Times, 23 September 1980, A3. Semerari remained in prison for a further seven months on charges of subversive association and forming armed groups, until he was freed in April 1981 due to a lack of evidence.'Bombing Suspect Freed', Guardian, 11 April 1981, p. 6. During captivity he suffered (in the words of Ferraresi) a "psychological breakdown", which ensured that he remained a patient at the San Camillo hospital in Rome and (later) at his own clinic, the Villa Mafalda, even after being formally released from court supervision.Ferraresi, Threats to Democracy, p. 175, note 39. Franco Coppola, 'Camorra o servizi segreti? Il caso Semerari a un bivio', la Repubblica, 24 May 1985. Retrieved 28 June 2022. A la Repubblica article, published in 1985, alleged that Semerari − who had been assaulted while in prison − lived in fear from this point onwards, as he believed that his erstwhile 'comrades' suspected him of having named those responsible for the Bologna bombing in order to secure an early release, and were planning on killing him in revenge. Franco Coppola, 'Cutolo, Cirillo, Sismi il 'Giallo' Semerari e' un intrigo di stato', la Repubblica, 21 May 1985. Retrieved 3 July 2022.
Murder