Alessandra Mussolini, the far-right Italian politician and granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, has claimed that his blood and brains are being offered for sale on the internet.
She said she had complained to police that remains taken from Mussolini’s body during a post-mortem examination in April 1945 and preserved at a hospital in Milan had been offered on eBay for €15,000 (US$21,600).
Mussolini was captured and shot by partisans at the end of the Second World War and his body was hung upside down in a Milan piazza together with that of Clara Petacci, his mistress. He is buried at Predappio in Emilia-Romagna, his home town.
Ms Mussolini said she had been attending a conference on internet crime in Naples when told about the offer. However, eBay said in a statement that the advert had been withdrawn shortly after it appeared and “before any offer could be made”. It said the sale violated eBay rules which forbid the sale of “any human organic material”.
Mussolini's Body
On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3 a.m., they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazza Loreto. The piazza had been renamed "Piazza Quindici Martiri" in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there.
"Sic Semper Tyrannus."
After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station. The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse.
Fascist loyalist Achille Starace was captured and sentenced to death and then taken to the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of Mussolini "He is a God", saluted what was left of his leader just before he was shot. The body of Starace was subsequently strung up next to the body of Mussolini.
After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in Musocco, the municipal cemetery to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists. Making off with their hero, they left a message on the open grave: "Finally, O Duce, you are with us. We will cover you with roses, but the smell of your virtue will overpower the smell of those roses."
On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—the Duce's body was finally 'recaptured' in August, hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on further investigation that it had been constantly on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, his birth place, after a campaign headed by Leccisi and the Movimento Sociale Italiano.
Leccisi, a fascist deputy, went on to write his autobiography, With Mussolini Before and After Piazzale Loreto. Adone Zoli, the Prime Minister of the day, contacted Donna Rachele, the former dictator's widow, to tell her he was returning the remains, as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament, including Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini).
Mussolini's tomb is flanked by marble fasces and a large idealised marble bust of himself sits above the tomb.
The crypt with a Fascist Guard of Honor:
Incredibly, they worship him still . . .
