With Discipline and Honour

A brief history of Ferdinando Enrico Pomarici, a valiant servant of the State, who passed away in 2024. One for whom the words discipline and honor – according to the Constitution – mean what they express.

He worked in the Palace of Justice in Milan, a witness to decades of the country's criminal history: local and international terrorism, common crime, mafias, kidnappings. «The older brother I never had. A public prosecutor with a free mind – his lifelong colleague Armando Spataro remembered him – who did not know the politics of stealth steps and who paid for it, despite what he gave to the history of this country».

Pomarici contributed to defeating the hateful crime of kidnapping in the 1970s. «It was the magistrate - explains Spataro - who, since 1976, with a very painful and criticized choice, had devised the so-called freezing of assets: thanks to his judicial measures, the family assets of the kidnapped were frozen to prevent the payment of the ransom and thus make the kidnapping unprofitable». Harsh criticism does not stop him: that will be the right way to erase the horror of kidnappings.

Raised at the school of Guido Galli– great magistrate killed in 1980 at the State University by the red terrorists of Prima Linea – Pomarici spends the years of lead in the trenches: «In Milan – he will remember – life was bad. There were frequent attacks, on Saturdays the city was unlivable due to demonstrations, clashes, accidents. All this had a heavy impact on people's lives and moods». Days of blood and shame, accompanied by fear. In that climate Ferdinando Pomarici and many of his colleagues serve the State, which some would like to overthrow, with discipline and honor. Terrorism will be defeated at a very high price. And when they try to erase the uncomfortable memory, with the classic Italian wipe the slate clean, the "everyone out", he will state: "I don't see why there should be generalized measures against those who killed. For me it makes no sense, absolutely. Whoever killed, killed. He shouldn't have killed."

To each his own. Aware that "unfortunately we are very limited in our ability to discover the truth, from the theft of the scooter to the massacre. Our abilities are human ones given by the means and by the understanding and knowledge of the facts."


Renzo Agasso
NP February '25