Maria Pasquinelli


Maria Pasquinelli was an Italian teacher and member of the Fascist party convicted for the killing of British Brigadier Robert de Winton in Pola on 10 February 1947.

Biography

Maria Pasquinelli was born in Florence, Italy on 16 March 1913. As a teenager, she was a member of the Italian Fascist Party. She served as a nurse in Libya during World War II. In 1942 she went to work as an Italian teacher in Spalato, Croatia, where she denounced the killings of Italian civilians in Dalmatia and Istria that occurred between 1943 and 1945, most of them perpetrated by Yugoslav partisans. The attempts of Pasquinelli to raise the Italian population in self-defence led to her arrest by German occupation troops. In early 1945 she tried unsuccessfully to unite all the Italians of Istria-both fascist soldiers, as well as Catholic and marxist partisans-against the annexation of Istria by the Yugoslavians under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito.

Killing of Brigadier Robert de Winton

On 10 February 1947, in protest against the Istrian exodus, Pasquinelli went to the Istrian city of Pola, where she shot and killed the commander of the British garrison in the area, Brigadier Robert de Winton. The Brigadier was in the process of reviewing his troops when he was hit by three shots in his back that killed him instantly. One British soldier was wounded by a stray bullet. As Allied supreme commander in Istria, de Winton was about to transfer power to Yugoslav authorities.
Sentenced to death by Allied authorities in 1949, Pasquinelli was handed over to the new Italian republican government, on the promise that she would serve life imprisonment. She was in jail for 17 years following the assassination, and upon her release by presidential pardon in 1964 she lived in Bergamo, where she remained until her death at age 100.