Special:WhatLinksHere/Benito Mussolini#Death User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 172#WP:ANI on .E2.80.9Cdisruption of Wikiproject.E2.80.9D [1] [2] The death of Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator, occurred on 28 April 1945 and was the result of a summary execution by anti-fascist partisans in northern Italy. In the final weeks of the war, Mussolini was captured fleeing towards the Swiss border by local partisans. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot the following day in the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra. The partisan who carried out the shootings used the [[nom de guerre] of "Colonello Valerio".
The "official" version of events is that the communist partisan Walter Audisio carried was "Colonello Valerio". However, since the end of the war, the identity of the partisan who killed Mussolini has been a subject of debate and dispute within Italy, with at least a dozen candidates having been proposed at different times. While the details of what happened remains shrouded in confusion and uncertainty, Audisio is the most likely person to have been Mussolini's executioner. Other facts surrounding the shooting, such as who gave the order to summarily execute Mussolini, also remain unclear.