Extraordinary Court of Assizes of Milan

The Extraordinary Courts of Assizes (CAS) were a special set of judicial bodies established on 22^nd April 1945 to try Italian citizens accused of ‘collaborating with the occupying Germans’, as well as collaborators accused of committing Fascist crimes during the Fascist period.

The CAS had provincial jurisdiction and were made up of people’s courts composed of one magistrate and four lay judges, drawn by lot from lists of adult citizens of ‘unblemished moral and political conduct’. The death penalty was among the sentences imposed. In Milan alone, where the Palace of Justice now stands, the CAS opened 1,001 proceedings and issued 885 sentences between May 1945 and December 1947.

Transformed into special Sections of the ordinary Assize Courts in October 1945, their activity was severely limited from June 1946 following the pardon of crimes of collaborationism provided for by the Togliatti Amnesty. Inactive since the end of 1947, the CAS were officially repealed in 2008.

The CAS were an expression of a type of justice that is strongly influenced by political values and formally deficient. However, the sentences they passed are an important source for understanding the forms, methods, and representations of the crimes attributable to Republican Fascism in the early post-war years, when the memory of the violence suffered was still very vivid among the public.

Photo credits: Civico Archivio Fotografico – Raccolte Grafiche e Fotografiche del Castello Sforzesco – Piazza Castello – Milano RI011228. Vincenzo Aragozzini. Lavori di costruzione