In 1902 Benito Mussolini, aged twenty-two, emigrated to Switzerland and became active in the socialist movement. In 1903 he was arrested and photo-fingerprinted by the Bernese police as a political agitator, kept in custody for two weeks and deported from the Canton of Berne. The booking photo showed the wrong name of Mussolini Benedetto. In 1904 he spent one week in jail in Geneve for falsifying his residence permit and was deported from the Canton of Ticino. He was also subject to serving a one year’s imprisonment sentence for desertion but he was not deported, thanks to the protection of some socialists and anarchists of the Canton of Ticino.
Berne, June 19, 1903
In 1926 Pertini was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and five years’ internment, but he managed to go into hiding and escaped to France, when he was granted political asylum. On his return to Italy in 1929, he was arrested again, tried by the Special Court for the Defense of the State and sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment. Once released, he became a member of the first executive committee of the Socialist party. In 1944, captured by the SS and sentenced to death, he escaped from prison with Giuseppe Saragat and reached Milan, when he became the secretary of the Socialist party in the territories occupied by the German troops and organized partisan war against Germans. In 1945 he was the Secretary of the Italian Socialist Party. In 1948 he was a Senator and in 1978 he was elected seventh President of the Italian Republic
Pisa, April 14, 1929
