They were part of the worker avant -garde and in 1975 they brutally attack the very young right student, who died after a month and a half of agony. They were tried and condemned, then they resumed their lives. Leaving a deep civil wound open.
They called them “the plumbers”. They were not able to repair a sink. But they knew how to use the Hazet 36: a long and heavy English key, ideal for splitting the head to the “fascists”. They were in the university order of operating avant -garde in Milan. In those seventies, they also dominate the Faculty of Medicine. On March 13, 1975 Sergio Ramelli attack: eighteen years, long hair, right -wing ideas. He wrote a theme on the red brigades. And the court of the far left does not forgive. The notorious Hazet 36 breaks through his skull, while trying to tie his scooter hello under the house, in via Paladini. They massacre the “black”. His head floats in a pool of blood. He dies after a month and a half of agony.
Ramelli, fifty years after his assassination, is a symbol. The most fierce hatred of the lead years. The most horrendous trivialization of political hatred. “The only good fascist is the dead one,” the companions scream then. The managers discover them many years later. The truth, covered by unreachable cowardice, comes out by chance. Guido Salvini, the tignous magistrate who reopens the investigation, will tell: “Everyone knew, but the left bourgeoisie covered them”. Between 1987 and 1990, they are condemned in eight: voluntary murder. In court they have contrite air, tweed jackets, thin ties. They are thirty with a bright future in front: future directors, primary and cathedices.
Ignominia will not overwhelm their ambitions. Marco Costa, that morning of March 1975, is the head of the team that is giving Ramelli to death, together with Giuseppe Ferrari Bravo. After graduation, he enters the Naval Academy. For two years he is medical officer: first at the Arsenale della Maddalena, then head of the health service on the euro ship. In 1985 he began working as a anesthesiologist. Enter the Lombard Institute of Hyperbaric Medicine, which will manage to direct. In an interview, Costa will explain: “It is a therapeutic methodology based on the administration of pure oxygen in particular environments, hermetically closed”.
He was arrested in that 1985, in September. The process begins. “I moved his arms from his head and had the English key fall,” he remembers at the hearing. He is sentenced as a material performer of the attack: initially at 15, then at 11 years and four months. After the prison, he resumes the celebrated career as a anesthesiologist. He also works at the Niguarda hospital in Milan and at the Città di Brescia clinical institute. In March 2022 the Region appoints him in the “coordination of the regional network for the activity of hyperbaric medicine”. He dies five months later. On August 25, 2022, in Corriere della Sera, his obituary is published: “The Board of Directors and all collaborators participate in the pain for the sudden disappearance of Marco Costa, health director of Ilomi, colleague, friend and esteemed professional”.
The other material executor is Ferrari Bravo. At the hearing he admits: “Then we had the presumption of knowing the truth.” He too, after having served a sentence of ten years and ten months, starts being a doctor’s doctor. He works in Sesto San Giovanni. In 2002 he was inserted by the Region in a group of experts on “health surveillance in construction”. It deals with diseases related to exposure to asbestos. Take part in some conferences abroad. Then, his traces are lost.
Also Claudio Colosio was part of the operating murderer of avant -garde worker. He had to monitor the area of the ambush and give any alarm. He graduated in 1980. Then he takes the specialization: work medicine, he too. He is arrested, like the others, in September 1985. A year later, the trial begins. In 1990 his definitive sentence came: seven years and nine months. However, he manages to complete his research doctorate the following year. He begins his career as a revered luminary. After a few years as a lover of the subject, he begins to teach the university: first in Camerino, then to the state road. Publish dozens of books and articles in scientific journals. He is a speaker in the congresses all over the world. He receives prestigious prizes: the last is from the University of Sofia, in Bulgaria. It also becomes responsible for the operating unit of the San Paolo and San Carlo hospitals in Milan. When Covid breaks out, he is the only Italian expert called by WHO to understand how to stem contagues among the health workers. On April 7, 2020, Corriere della Sera publishes a long interview in Colosio. The professor explains how to intervene promptly to curb the contagions: “Tamponi to asymptomatic and mapping of contacts”.
The Lombardy Region inserts it in the Scientific Committee for the Coronavirus emergency. The appointment does not escape brothers of Italy. Ramelli, for Giorgia Meloni’s party, is a hero. “His brutal and absurd death has become a symbol for generations of right -wing militants from all over Italy” will say the premier in the fifty -year of his death. Ignazio La Russa, then president of the Senate, was the lawyer of the Ramelli family. Thus, Colosio is excluded. Not bad. He continues to teach until November 2023, when he retires. He is now 71 years old. One less than Claudio Scazza, appreciated psychiatrist. As soon as he graduated, he begins to work in Cernusco sul Naviglio. After the sentence to six years and three months, in 1992, they call him as responsible for a center in Besana Brianza. Then he goes to Vimercate and Niguarda. In 2015 he became the primary of psychiatry in the Milanese hospital.
The same assignment of Antonio Belpiede. When he was arrested, in October 1985, he is the group leader of the Italian Communist Party in Cerignola. The final sentence is seven years. In 2009 he was appointed primary obstetrics in Canosa di Puglia. Someone then remembers his past. He defends himself: «I go ahead with his head held high. I did not participate in that action, I didn’t kill anyone, I suffered a shameful condemnation. I was a member of the opera avant -garde order service, but I don’t know anything about the Ramelli murder. Instead, I know that, after graduating in medicine, I returned to Puglia and I dedicated a life to work and patients ».
A career, also in his case, dotted with satisfactions. He is called as head of the regional coordination of birth points. In 2018 he received a public praise even from the Apulian governor, Michele Emiliano: “I just phoned to congratulate Antonio Belpiede, the primary gynecologist of Barletta, given the results obtained”.
Brunella Colombelli has also never admitted her participation in the assault. After Ramelli’s death, he becomes biologist and moves to Switzerland. In September 1985 he stopped at the border. It is then sentenced to six years and three months, for having indicated the aggressors the place of the ambush. He returns to Geneva, where he now works in women’s professional training.
But why Ramelli really? The question echoes in court during those shocking hearings in spring 1987. Luigi Montinari was part of the commando. He had to supervise and alert, in case of danger. “He was a political opponent, with his connotation and represented a reality that we fought,” he explains to the judge. The banality of evil, in fact. After the sentence of six years and three months, Montinari resumes dentist’s work in his Milanese studio. Like the work doctor Franco Castelli, punished with the same sentence.
Together with Colosio and Scazza, before the sentence, the two send a letter to Anita Ramelli. On that sheet, they try to argue the unheard of: «We had nothing personal against his son, we had never known him or seen. But, as too often it happened at that time, the fact of thinking in a different way automatically became the cause of free and unjustifiable violence ». They ask for forgiveness. They offer compensation for damages: two hundred million lire. Sergio’s mother refuses. In an interview with Corriere della Sera, he explains: “I had first had the letter, even anonymous, in these 12 years of injuries he would have helped me a lot, he would have helped me to take on … but they wrote it ten months after the truth had come to light”.
At least the debut of that letter, however, is unequivocal: “Those who write today are very different men from the guys of that tragic day.” The ruthless hydraulic have become esteemed doctors. From the summer, behind which to hide the English key, to the white coat, perfect for showing late repentance.
