Terrorism, Ustica, Algeria. The roots of a great reporter – Corriere.it

Andrea Purgatori passed away a month ago. A sudden, cruel goodbye that is very difficult to digest for anyone who has appreciated him in work and in his personal life. These days, there are rightly many memories associated with his work for La7. to the passion he poured into his television creation, Atlantisvery popular with viewers. The director of this television channel, Andrea Salerno, in an interview with Marianna Aprile for Oggi, claims that in the Purgatori program he found the perfect synthesis of his skills as a screenwriter, his journalistic talent and his desire to be a public figure .

So Atlantis as the culmination of a long professional career. Equally right for that Remember the first purgatori, signature and special correspondent of the Corriere della Sera from 1976 to 2000the year he leaves the newspaper to pursue freelance screenplays, essays and the many professional bets (he will return years later to collaborate).

The February 6, 1976 debut track announces its plot: a foiled attack on the Egyptian embassy in Rome, which turns out to be a trail of terrorism linked to Gaddafi. Then immediately Interviews and investigations into the Pasolini crime, the arrest of the famous French criminal Albert Bergamelli, the many kidnappings of that time, the MSI deputy Sandro Saccucci and the events of the shooting in Sezze in May 1976, the salmonella epidemic in the Rome Polyclinic. But there are also excursions into color (the castings for the film). Pigs with wings by Paolo Pietrangeli based on the novel by Marco Lombardo Radice and Lidia Ravera), the shootings in the streets of Rome in 1977, the death of Giorgiana Masi. Quick attacks, anti-rhetorical, not smug (at Masi’s funeral: they greeted Giorgiana in silence one last time. Fists raised to the sky, red carnations thrown towards the coffin by the hundreds). He also deals with the Pecorelli crime, to which he will dedicate one of the latest episodes Atlantis last June 28th. A continuous high school of real journalism, varied in subjects, as is always the case in newspapers with leading reporters.

The debut helps to understand the roots, the choices and the style and above all, an itinerary much awaited and planned with determination. In June 1980 begins the tragic chapter of the Ustica massacre, the DC9 Itavia crashed in the Mediterranean after being broken in two, the 81 victims, the drama of family members demanding the truth and also justice (Purgatori will never do it). they give up). the story of his professional life (Ustica/Purgatori, almost synonymous, his last piece as Corriere della Sera correspondent on September 28, 2000, actually on Ustica).

But Purgatori was sent to Iran in the years that he obtained a visa and identified reliable sources (the war with Iraq, his arrival on the Basra front in January 1987, the interviews with Iraqi prisoners in Tehran, the political- religious leaders of the theocracy). with representatives of the caliber of Rafsanjani and Montazeri) was extremely complex. Years of correspondence, analyses, connections with Italian diplomacy (Giulio Andreotti protagonist). Stories from Algeria. Libya with Gaddafi mainly because of its connection to the Ustica tragedy, but also because of its central role on the Middle East chessboard. And so much more. Flipping through the archival materials, one finds an immense amount of work: precise, respectful of the sources, meticulous in the reports. from the Andrea Purgatori to the Corriere della Sera, one of its roots of identity.