Carmine "Mino" Pecorelli (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarmine ˈmiːno pekoˈrɛlli]; 14 September 1928 – 20 March 1979) was an Italian journalist, shot dead in Rome a year after former prime minister Aldo Moro's 1978 kidnapping and subsequent killing. He was described as a "maverick journalist with excellent secret service contacts".[1] According to Pecorelli, Aldo Moro's kidnapping had been organized by a "lucid superpower" and was inspired by the "logic of Yalta". Pecorelli's name was on Licio Gelli's list of Propaganda Due (P2) masonic members, discovered in 1980 by the Italian police.[2]
Pecorelli was killed in Rome's Prati district, with four gunshots, on 20 March 1979. Former prime minister Giulio Andreotti was tried on charges of complicity in the murder of Pecorelli, but was acquitted along with his co-defendants that included Gaetano Badalamenti and Massimo Carminati, in 1999. Local prosecutors successfully appealed the acquittal and there was a retrial, which in 2002 convicted Andreotti and sentenced him to 24 years imprisonment. Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation definitively acquitted Andreotti of the murder in 2003.
- ^ Moro's ghost haunts political life, by Philip Willan, The Guardian, May 9, 2003
- ^ The list of affiliated P2 members can be found here (in Italian).