Biography
Roberto Elia was an Italian anarchist printer born in Catanzaro on July 29, 1871. Active as a socialist in Italy from 1898, he was repeatedly arrested for political activity. After immigrating to the United States, he worked for Carlo Tresca’s La Plebe in Pittsburgh and Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva in Barre, Vermont, before relocating to Boston and New York. He belonged to the Gruppo Gaetano Bresci in East Harlem and published the anarchist journals Domani and L’Ordine. Federal agents took Elia and fellow printer Andrea Salsedo into custody without warrants on February 25, 1920, suspecting them of printing leaflets connected with the 1919 anarchist bombings. They were held incommunicado in the Bureau of Investigation’s Manhattan offices. Salsedo died in a fall from the building in May. Elia was later transferred to Ellis Island and deported to Italy on August 7, 1920. He remained active in the Italian anarchist movement and died of tuberculosis in 1924.
The Militant’s Sacco–Vanzetti retrospective reports eight weeks of incommunicado detention at the Department of Justice offices in New York before Salsedo’s fatal fall on May 3, 1920. It reports that Elia was deported before he could testify. These are attributed retrospective statements; no precise admission date is calculated from the rounded eight weeks. The Militant, August 26, 1977, volume41number31, original PDF page 7. Source: https://www.themilitant.com/1977/4131/MIL4131.pdf#page=7
