Guido Puletti was born in Argentina. His father was an Italian emigrant from the province of Perugia; his mother had Spanish and English ancestors. He studied in Italian and English high schools in Argentina and grew close to the groups of the Peronist left. After the advent of the military dictatorship in 1976 he paid for his political and trade union commitments with prison and torture and in 1977 he was expelled from Argentina, together with his wife and two children. He moved to Italy where, in 1981, he began his career as a journalist writing for the Bresciaoggi newspaper, collaborating with news agencies and periodicals, travelling the world and establishing himself as a specialist in international politics and economics. Between 1989 and 1991 he focused his attention on the profound political and social upheavals in Eastern Europe. The war in the former Yugoslavia becomes central to his journalism and political analyst activities. He died on May 29th 1993, just 40 years old, in Bosnia, during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. That trip to Bosnia, which was not the first, was aimed at carrying out a solidarity project to aid the cities of Vitez and Zvidovici. It had been agreed that from Zvidovici five Italian volunteers, including Guido Puletti, would take by bus 62 people comprising widows and their children away from the war and to Italy. Near Gornji Vakuf the humanitarian convoy was assailed by the paramilitary “Green Berets” under the command of Hanefija Prijc known as “Paraga”, who made the five volunteers descend, and escorted them to a nearby clearing to shoot them. Two managed to escape but Guido Puletti, Sergio Lana, a 21-year-old student from Gussago and Fabio Moreni, a 40-year-old entrepreneur from Cremona, died. In September 1998, the Italian Justice Ministry recognized the massacre as a “political crime”.
Taken from the collection edited by Monica Andolfatto for the book Day of Remembrance of Journalists killed by mafias and terrorism, Rome, 2008
Taken from the introduction to the volume: Guido Puletti, The world that is not there, Datanews, 1996, edited by Cinzia Grolla and Francesco Germinaro
(Update by Alberta Del Bianco and Grazia Pia Attolini, May 3, 2020)
- 2000 – Hanefija Prijic (called “Paraga”), the Bosnian Army officer who commanded two of his subordinates (not identified) in the massacre of the 29th May 1993 in which Guido Puletti was also killed, was arrested in Bosnia on the 6th October 2000.
- 2001 – On June 28th 2001, at the end of the first instance trial, held in Travnik, Hanefija Prijic was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
- 2002 – The sentence was reduced to 13 years, on appeal.
- 2014 – Hanefija Prijic is released from prison in February 2014, after serving an additional 4 months of detention for another crime.
- 2015 – On 26th October 2015 he was arrested in Germany on an International Arrest Warrant issued by the Brescia Public Prosecutor’s Office.
- 2016 – He was extradited to Italy on the 19th February 2016 and put on trial for the crimes of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery aggravated by the use of a firearm. Two sisters of Guido Puletti, his companion at the time of his death, and Cristian Penocchio and Agostino Zanotti, the only survivors of the massacre, form a civil action.
- 2017 – At the end of the first instance trial, in Brescia, Hanefija Prijic was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 2nd 2017; sentence commuted to 20 years on appeal, on the 29th September 2017.
- 2018 – The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court on the 9th May 2018. Hanefija Prijic, finally, having already served 13 years in his home country, adding the period spent in Bosnian prisons to that spent in Italy, thanks to the pardon and early release , was released from prison on the 28th August 2018.
