Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli (21 October 1928 – 15 December 1969) was an Italian railroad worker and anarchist, who died while being detained by the Polizia di Stato in 1969.

Although he had to work in many low-income jobs, such as waiter and warehouseman,[1] in order to make ends meet, he nonetheless found the time to read many books and become politically active throughout his youth.

[2] In 1944, Pinelli was a member of the Italian resistance movement within the Franco Brigade, and worked with a group of anarchist partisans that introduced him to libertarian thought.

[7] Three police officers interrogating Pinelli, including Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, were put under investigation in 1971 for his death; legal proceedings concluded it was due to accidental causes,[8][9] citing active illness.

[5] In 2001, three neo-fascists were convicted,[13][14] a sentence that was overturned in March 2004;[5] a fourth defendant, Carlo Digilio, was a suspected CIA informant who became a witness for the state and received immunity from prosecution.

[17] In 2022, as part of an investigative podcast about the Piazza Fontana bombing by Il Fatto Quotidiano,[18] the then 99-years-old General Gianadelio Maletti, former number two of Servizio Informazioni Difesa, the secret service of Italy's Ministry of Defence between 1971 and 1975, who was definitively sentenced to 12 months in prison for the misdirections on the Piazza Fontana investigations and had been at large in South Africa since 1980, discussed the death of Pinelli.

"[18] According to Panessa, there was not just an unexpected incident involving somewhat harsh policemen but someone who had taken revenge on Pinelli, who persisted in not confessing after three days of illegal interrogation.

[20] Hints of his death are also in the songs "La ballata del Pinelli" (1969, with various versions), "Asilo 'Republic'" (1980) by Vasco Rossi, and "Quarant'anni" (1993) by the Modena City Ramblers, among others.