ABSTRACT
Not only were the highest levels of the state machinery mobilised on behalf of the Christian Democrats-fully accepting negotiations and payments to both the Camorra and the Red Brigades during the kidnapping-the subsequent seven-year judicial investigation was frequently obstructed and vilified. When the verdict was finally announced in 1988, Christian Democrat Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita described the investigating magistrate, Carlo Alemi, in the following terms: ‘a Judge who acts outside procedures, and who abuses procedures as a vehicle for his own suspicion, places himself outside the institutional network’,1 and called for disciplinary measures to be
taken against him. These were subsequently set in motion although no disciplinary steps were ever taken. Vincenzo Scotti, one of the Christian Democrat ministers mentioned in the final verdict, also attempted to sue Judge Alemi for libel but without success.
