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Fascist Repression in the Italian ‘Fourth Shore’: The Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State in Libya
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
Abstract
This article investigates the Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State (Tribunale Speciale per la Difesa dello Stato; TSDS) in the colonial territories that constitute present-day Libya at the time of fascist rule. This court acted as the judicial arm of the fascist regime in the so-called Italian ‘fourth shore’. As a tool of the repressive apparatus of the regime, it persecuted the ‘anti-national enemies’ outside the metropolitan area, striking against those who opposed the fascist dictatorship and the fascist occupation in the colony by de-legitimising the defendants on juridical, political and moral grounds. The TSDS in Libya shows that the fight against the ‘anti-nationals’ was a primary concern of Mussolini's ultranationalist regime not only in the peninsular territory but also within the colonial administration.
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References
1 The quotes are in Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome [ACS], Tribunale Speciale per la Difesa dello Stato [TSDS] in Tripolitania (Libia), Miscellanea fascicoli processuali e affari diversi [Misc.], busta 6 fascicolo 1640.
2 Ibid.
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11 Ibid., 18.
12 Ibid., 18.
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14 Rocco, Alfredo, La trasformazione dello Stato. Dallo Stato liberale allo Stato Fascista (Rome: La Voce, 1927), 126Google Scholar.
15 The text of Law no. 2008 of 25 Nov. 1926 is in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, 6 Dec. 1926, no. 281, 5314–5.
16 Rocco, La trasformazione dello Stato, 126.
17 Pergher, Mussolini's Nation-Empire, 52. See also Cresti, Federico, Non desiderare la terra d'altri. La colonizzazione italiana in Libia (Rome: Carocci, 2011)Google Scholar; Segrè, Claudio, Fourth Shore: The Italian Colonisation of Libya (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974)Google Scholar.
18 Ryan, Eileen, Religion as Resistance. Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 With Law no. 1013 of 26 June 1927, Mussolini's government granted metropolitan citizenship to those native Libyans who, having applied for it, met the following conditions: being a minimum twenty-one years old; not being polygamous; not having been convicted of crimes involving the loss of political rights; and having passed at least the third-grade exam in the Italian school. Furthermore, they should have met at least one of the following special conditions: having served the motherland with fidelity and honour in one of the state military corps; having held a public governmental function; having obtained an honorary distinction by the fascist government; or being born to a Libyan citizen with metropolitan citizenship. In Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, no. 148, 28 June 1927, 2725.
20 This privileged treatment that the Italian legislation reserved to Libyan subjects was abolished at the end of the 1930s. Royal Decree-Law no. 70 of 9 Jan. 1939 abrogated the right to obtain the metropolitan citizenship and established second-rate citizenship – the so-called ‘special Italian citizenship’ – for Libyans who possessed particular requirements. It entailed a significant reduction in civil and political rights for Libyans, as well as their automatic exclusion from assignments that implied the exercise of command over metropolitan Italian citizens. In Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, no. 28, 3 Feb. 1939, 583–4. Law no. 822 of 13 May 1940 compared the condition of Italian Libyan citizens to the condition of the subjects in Italian Eastern Africa, which was regulated by the racial legislation for the territories of the empire in 1937–40. In Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, no. 166, 17 July 1940, 2626–7.
21 Giorgio Rochat, ‘La repressione della resistenza in Cirenaica, 1927–1931’, in Giorgio Rochat, ed., Guerre italiane in Libia e in Etiopia. Studi militari 1921–1939 (Paese: Pegus, 1991), 93–7.
22 Ryan, Religion as Resistance, 137–43.
23 Michael Ebner, ‘Fascist Violence and the “Ethnic Reconstruction” of Cyrenaica (Libya), 1922–1934’, in Philip Dwyer and Amanda Nettelbeck, eds., Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 197–218; Labanca, Nicola, La guerra italiana per la Libia 1911–1931 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), 159–71Google Scholar; Labanca, Nicola, Oltremare. Storia dell'espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 172Google Scholar; Baldinetti, Anna, The Origins of the Libyan Nation. Colonial Legacy, Exile and the Emergence of a New Nation-State (New York: Routledge, 2010), 45–8Google Scholar; Boca, Angelo Del, Gli italiani in Libia. Dal fascismo a Gheddafi (Rome: Laterza, 1991), 56–121Google Scholar. See also Anthony Dirk Moses, ed., Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008); Wolfe, Patrick, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research, 4 (2006): 387–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Ryan, Religion as Resistance, 136–7.
25 The text of Royal Decree no. 1050 of 2 June 1927 is in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, 2 July 1927, no. 151, 2811–2.
26 In the trial files related to the first years of activity of the tribunal, the lettering ‘Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State in Tripolitania’ appears. Nevertheless, the archive contains also some sentences of the TSDS in Benghazi (Cyrenaica). Indeed, although the TSDS was based in Tripoli, the governor of the colony had the right to order it to sit in other locations. After the unification of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica into a single colony in 1934 under Italo Balbo's general governorate, the wording ‘Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State in Tripolitania’ was retained in many trial papers. At the same time, the wording ‘Special Tribunal for the Defence of the State in Libya’ began to be used. On the evolution of the Italian colonial system in Libya see ‘Libia’, in Partito Nazionale Fascista, ed., Dizionario di politica (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1940), vol. II, 782–5; Royal Decree-Law no. 2012 of 3 Dec. 1934 regarding ‘Ordinamento organico per l'amministrazione della Libia’ in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, 21 Dec. 1934, no. 299, 5786–93.
27 Benito Mussolini's speech for the fifth anniversary of the MVSN on 1 Feb. 1928 is in Edoardo Susmel and Duilio Susmel, eds., Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini (Florence: La Fenice, 1957), vol. XXIII, 94.
28 Ryan, Eileen, ‘Violence and the Politics of Prestige: The Fascist Turn in Colonial Libya’, Modern Italy, 2 (2015): 126–8Google Scholar.
29 See Royal Decree no. 1200 of 17 June 1929 is in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, 24 July 1929, no. 171, 3489–90.
30 The limit of the ‘violation of the law’ was due to the fact that the TSDS in Rome could not pass judgement on the substance of a trial held before the colonial TSDS but only on possible incorrect interpretations of the law by the judges of the Special Tribunal in Libya.
31 See Law no. 698 of 15 June 1933 on ‘Revisione delle sentenze emesse dei Tribunali speciali della Tripolitania e Cirenaica', in Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno d'Italia, 4 July 1933, no. 153, 2922.
32 Sharia law provides for hanging as one of the harsher methods of executing the death penalty, along with beheading, stoning and dropping the convict from a high wall, for the most serious crimes. According to the Islamic penal code, public execution serves to increase the deterrent effect of punishment. See Sanaz Alasti and Eric Bronson, ‘Death Penalty in Sharia Law’, in Robert M. Bohm and Gavin Lee, eds., Routledge Handbook on Capital Punishment (New York: Routledge, 2018), 231–43.
33 See, for instance, ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 12 f. 1734, b.13 f. 1747 and 1755.
34 On the trial of Umar al-Mukhtar see Giorgio Rochat, ‘La repressione della resistenza in Cirenaica (1927–1931)’ and Romain Rainero, ‘La cattura, il processo e la morte di Al-Mukhtar nel quadro della politica fascista di “riconquista” della Libia’, both in Enzo Santarelli, Giorgio Rochat, Romain Rainero et al., eds., Omar Al Mukhtar e la riconquista fascista della Libia (Milan: Marzorati, 1981), 53–189 and 191–253. The quote is on page 148.
35 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 13 f. 1757 and 1762.
36 Ibid., b. 14, no folder number.
37 Ibid., b. 5 f. 1590.
38 Ibid., 1577.
39 Ibid.
40 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 1 f. 1526 and 1530, b. 4 f. 1562, b. 5 f. 1574 and 1594.
41 The fascist government provided amnesties through Royal Decree no. 736 of 11 Apr. 1928 and Royal Decree no. 99 of 26 Jan. 1933 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the regime. Other amnesties were conceded by the TSDS in Sept. 1933, June 1938, and May and Sept. 1940. The quote is in ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 13 f. 1756.
42 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 6 f. 1644.
43 Ibid., b. 15, no folder number.
44 Ibid., b. 6 f. 1600.
45 Ibid., b. 11 f. 1699.
46 Ibid., b. 16, no folder number.
47 The data related to the natives do not pretend to be exhaustive about the fascist repression towards women in Libya. The number indicated does not correspond to the total amount of Libyan women who were victims of fascist colonial violence until 1943. The above-mentioned figures refer exclusively to the female victims of the political justice of the TSDS during the period of activity of this court, according to the archival material on female defendants found at the ACS.
48 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 11 f. 1702.
49 Ibid. The fact that the defendant had called her dog ‘Mussolini’ was an even more serious offence in the context of a Muslim country like Libya since Islam considers the dog an impure animal.
50 See Balbo, Italo, Diario 1922 (Milan: Mondadori, 1932), 9, 23–4, 125Google Scholar; Farinacci, Roberto, Squadrismo. Dal mio diario della vigilia 1919–1922 (Rome: Ardita, 1933), 29, 88, 211, 230–42Google Scholar; Bastianini, Giuseppe, Rivoluzione (Rome: Berlutti, 1923), 12, 16Google Scholar; Girace, Piero, Diario di uno squadrista (Naples: Rispoli, 1940), 6–7, 50Google Scholar; Vicentini, Raffaele Angelo, Il movimento fascista attraverso il diario di uno squadrista (Venice: Zanetti, 1935), 56, 91, 113, 142Google Scholar; Bruno Frullini, Squadrismo fiorentino (Florence: Vallecchi,1933), 17–9, 65, 219, 269–70. On the topic, Di Nucci, ‘Lo Stato fascista e gli italiani “antinazionali”’, 129–45; Gentile, Storia del Partito Fascista, 500.
51 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 1 f. 1540.
52 Ibid., b. 1 f. 1501, 1508, 1512.
53 Ibid., b. 4 f. 1572 bis.
54 Ibid., b. 5 f. 1585, b. 8 f. 1666, b. 5 f. 1583.
55 Ibid., b. 6 f. 1631.
56 Ibid., b. 13 f. 1755.
57 Ibid., b. 12 f. 1732.
58 Ibid., b. 12 f. 1737, b. 11, f. 1701.
59 Benito Mussolini, ‘Discorso dell'Ascensione’, in Susmel and Susmel, eds., Opera Omnia di Benito Mussolini, vol. XXII, 362–3.
60 Ibid., 362, 364.
61 ACS, TSDS in Tripolitania (Libia), Misc., b. 2 f. 1537, b. 8 f. 1667, b. 4 f. 1567.