Anonima
Sarda
The cycle of ransom kidnappings in Sardinia, 1960, 1997.
Between 1960 and 1997, Sardinia was the scene of about one hundred and fifty documented ransom kidnappings, a criminal phenomenon quickly grouped, in the Italian press, under the evocative name Anonima Sequestri Sarda.
The term « anonima » is misleading: it does not designate a single society, but the diffuse and faceless nature of a phenomenon made of autonomous criminal cells, often linked by geography (Barbagia, Supramonte) rather than by hierarchy.
A recurring pattern
Target selection
Industrialists, heirs, entrepreneurs, high ransom-potential profiles.
Lightning kidnapping
Often in Sardinia itself, sometimes on the mainland, then insular repatriation.
Prolonged confinement
In the caves and shepherd huts of the Supramonte, for weeks or months.
Negotiation
Through intermediaries, coded letters, sometimes anatomical pieces sent to families.
From the mountain
to the police record
A sequential reading, from archaic 19th-century banditry to the extinction of the phenomenon in the late 1990s.
Ancient pastoral banditry
Emergence of so-called « honour » banditry in Barbagia, the mountainous inland region. Customary codes (barbaricino), vendetta, and resistance to Piedmontese then Italian authorities.
Residual banditry
Notable figures such as Samuele Stocchino. The isolated pastoral economy and rugged geography sustain a rural criminal phenomenon distinct from southern mafias.
Birth of the Anonima Sarda
Emergence of ransom kidnappings as a criminal phenomenon organised in autonomous cells. Unlike Cosa Nostra or the 'Ndrangheta, this is not a hierarchical structure but a shared modus operandi.
Peak of the kidnappings
Multiplication of kidnappings, often of industrialists or heirs. Prolonged captivity in the caves of Barbagia and the Supramonte. The Italian State responds with military operations in the interior.
Graziano Mesina
Bandit from Orgosolo who became a media figure, several times escaped and recaptured. Embodies the popular ambiguity of Sardinian banditry, both hunted and mythologised.
Legislative tightening
1991 law freezing the family assets of kidnapped persons to prevent ransom payments. Beginning of the decline of the phenomenon.
The Farouk Kassam case
Kidnapping of a 7-year-old child, freed after seven months, one of the last media-marking kidnappings before the gradual extinction of the phenomenon.
Last recorded kidnapping
End of the historical cycle of the Anonima Sarda. Estimated total: about 150 kidnappings in Sardinia between 1960 and 1997, according to judicial and academic sources.
Memory and historiography
The phenomenon is now documented by academic historiography (works by Casalunga, Domenech) and by regional press archives. No occurrence of the Porcu name among the documented members of the criminal groups.
No Porcu identified among documented members.
The cross-checks carried out for this project, genealogical registers, local press, judicial archives, specialised historiographical works, reveal no bearer of the Porcu name among the identified members of the criminal groups linked to the Anonima Sarda.
This obviously does not exclude future findings, research remains open, but confirms, as it stands, that the presence of the surname on the island belongs to a rural, pastoral and family history, not a criminal one.
« Let us return, now, to the only history that matters: that of the family. »
Chapter VI, Genealogy →