Extraordinary Court of Assizes – CAS

The Corte d’Assise Straordinaria (CAS) of Turin, established by the Legislative Decree No. 142 of April 22, 1945, judged 993 collaborators of the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in over 600 trials held between June 8, 1945, and December 31, 1947.

The defendants were accused of having supported the German invader and facilitated their criminal designs through a dense network of administrative, economic, political, and military relationships. Members of the Republican National Guard (GNR), Black Brigades and RSI police, in particular, were convicted of serious crimes (torture, deportations, murders, massacres) against the civilian population and the partisans.

In the incendiary postwar climate, the Turin magistrates – led by Domenico Riccardo Peretti Griva – responded to civil society’s expectations of justice with a jurisprudence marked by severity, which was substantially thwarted by the Court of Cassation (with numerous annulment rulings) and by the amnesty and pardon measures (starting with the c. so-called Togliatti amnesty of 1946) leading to the release of all collaborationists (including murderers and torturers) by the end of the 1950s.

This research, initiated within the framework of ISTORETO’s Extraordinary and Military Justice Project, directed by Lawyer Maria Di Massa, involves the study and analytical filing of the trial records of the Turin CAS preserved at the State Archives of Turin and of the judgments (CAS and Court of Cassation) present in ISTORETO’s Piedmontese Magistracy Judgment Fund, as well as the widening of the investigation to the records of the Turin Military Court concerning the so-called military collaborationism. The comparative analysis of the trial sources allows for the reconstruction of the complex relationship between German occupier and Italian collaborationist (various levels of complicity, respective “areas of impunity,” use of national and cultural stereotypes in judgments and defensive strategies) and the investigation of  the contradictions of postwar justice toward fascists of the so called “Social Italian Republic” (RSI), as harsh in the courtrooms of the territorial courts (particularly in Turin) as lenient in the rooms of the Roman apex of judicial and political power.

The records on the Turin CAS trials are uploaded to the ARCHOS platform (periodically updated with the progress of the research) and freely available for consultation. The CAS trial records can be consulted at the Turin State Archives.

The sentences from the Piedmontese Magistracy Judgment Fund are available at  ISTORETO.