Angelo Pellegrino Sbardellotto

Angelo Sbardellotto was born on the 1st August 1907, the fifth of eleven children, into a numerous, and therefore poor family originally from the village of Villa; to survive most of the villagers were forced to emigrate. Angelo and his father also emigrated in October 1924; they lived in France, Luxembourg and lastly Belgium, where Angelo worked as a miner and a machine hand. Still very young, according to his brother, he sympathised with socialism and was shocked by the cowardly killing in the town by fascists of the socialist Edoardo Mattia on the 1st May 1922. Despite a Catholic upbringing and the respect towards authority taught by his family, the young Sbardellotto very soon moved towards anarchism through knowing other political immigrant workers and also through reading anarchist books and newspapers.

In 1928 his mother, with the help of the schoolmaster of the town, had a letter written appealing for him to return home. He replied with his reasons why not, expressing his anti-fascism and anarchism and his anti-militarist objections to being conscripted. His mother was a devout Catholic and traditionalist and sought the advice of the local priest. It was either him or the schoolmaster who read the letter out for her, who denounced Angelo to the fascist authorities. He was added to the list of the 270 "most dangerous" Italian anti-fascists living in Belgium.

In 1929 while working as a coal miner he joined the anarchist committee of Liege, and was active in the activities to bring about the general strike in Belgium in solidarity with framed Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, alongside Maria Zazzi. He subscribed to anarchist newspapers of various tendencies, such as Il Risveglio (The Awakening), Germinal, Aurora, L'Adunata dei Refrattari, Il Monito and La Lotta Umana (The Human Fight). He was declared a 'draft dodger' and was put on the wanted list by the police (initially as a Communist) and put under surveillance by the Italian secret police from 1929 as a subversive activist.

He was stopped and arrested, perhaps by chance, in Piazza Venezia, Rome on the 4th June 1932. He was found to be armed and in possession of a Swiss passport. He was also carrying two rudimentary bombs and a pistol, and was then brutally interrogated and probably tortured at police headquarters, after freely admitting to having entered Italy clandestinely, determined to avenge Michael Schirru by killing Mussolini, and eluding for the third time police vigilance and OVRA secret service agents.

He refused to plead for commutation, stating that he was only sorry that he had not carried out the attempt on Mussolini, after his lawyer begged him to write to Il Duce for mercy. Therefore on the dawn of June 17th at 5.45 am he was put in front of the firing squad at the Bretta Fort after having refused the priest. His last words were "Long live anarchy!" and he was shot in the back, by a platoon of the Militia at Forte Bravetta in Rome, which during the Resistance in World War II would be the scene of other executions of anarchists and partisans. A few moments before the Republican Domenico Bovone had been executed – he too condemned to death for attempts against the regime.

[www.ephemanar.net/juin17.html#sbardelletto]