Angelo Sbardellotto Executed (1932)

Fri Jun 17, 1932

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Angelo Sbardellotto was an Italian anarchist executed by the state on this day in 1932 for plotting to assassinate Benito Mussolini. He refused to beg for clemency, instead telling the court he regretted not succeeding in his plan.

Sbardellotto was born into a poor family who was compelled to emigrate to find work. Angelo and his father left Italy in October 1924, living in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium, where Angelo worked as a miner and a machine hand.

While working as a 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.

Already under surveillance as a suspected communist subversive, Sbardellotto was stopped by police in Piazza Venezia, Rome in 1932, found armed with two rudimentary bombs and a pistol, as well as possession of a Swiss passport.

Admitting to having entered Italy clandestinely with the intent of avenging socialist Michael Schirru by killing Mussolini (Schirru himself had attempted to assassinate Mussolini), Sbardellotto was interrogated and likely tortured by police before his trial a week later on June 11th.

When Sbardellotto’s lawyer requested that he write to Mussolini directly to ask for his life to be spared, he refused, stating that he was only sorry that he had not carried out the attempt on Mussolini.

On June 17th, 1932, at twenty-four years old, he was put in front of the firing squad at the Bretta Fort. He refused last rites from a priest. Angelo’s last words before being shot were “Long live anarchy!”