Statement from Toni Negri, 1985
I am a university professor.
Up until 7 April 1979, I taught at Padua and at Paris.
On that day I was put in prison.
The arrest warrant said: assassin of President Aldo Moro. I was accused of being the head of the Red Brigades, the military branch of that mass movement which was called Workers’ Autonomy. I was also accused of having encouraged insurrection against official institutions. Besides Moro, I had to answer for seventeen murders. I have been cleared of all these allegations. And nevertheless I have been tried: thanks to the emergency laws and the denunciations of “repentant” terrorists, I have been sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. In July 1983 I was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by voters in Rome, in Naples and in Milan. Thus I left prison after four and a half years of preventive detention. After two months of debate, the Chamber decided to withdraw my parliamentary immunity, by a vote of 300 to 293. I then chose freedom and sought refuge in France.
I am innocent of all the crimes of which I have been accused. Only the arrogance of judges and reasons of state have condemned me. [I have kept a journal, Italie: Rouge et Noire, in which] I tell of prison, the trial, my election, my flight to France. I hope that one day I will be able to write a second journal that will tell of my return to Italy and the victory of justice over the laws and men whose actions distort democracy in my country.
Toni Negri, 1985
translated by Timothy S. Murphy
Negri in English 