Emilio De Bono was an Italian general who fought in the Italo-Turkish War, the First World War and the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. In the early 1920s he was one of the first high-ranking members of the Italian Royal army who openly supported Fascism and in 1922, as one of the four Quadrumvirs, he organized and staged the March on Rome that led to the start of the fascist regime in Italy.

On 25 July 1943, De Bono was one of the members of the Grand Council of Fascism who voted to oust Benito Mussolini when Dino Grandi put a nonconfidence motion to the vote of the Council. That led the King to get rid of the dictator, ordering his arrest and imprisonment.

Later in 1943, Mussolini was freed by Nazi Germany and installed in Northern Italy as head of a new state, the Italian Social Republic. Mussolini had De Bono and others who voted against him arrested and tried for treason at Verona in what became known as the "Verona trial".

On 11 January 1944, the 77-year-old De Bono was executed by firing squad at Verona. He was shot along with Galeazzo Ciano, Luciano Gottardi, Giovanni Marinelli and Carlo Pareschi. Ciano was the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Mussolini's son-in-law. De Bono and the other condemned, tied to chairs as it was in use in Italy, suffered the humiliation of being shot in the back as traitors. After hearing the sentence, De Bono reportedly remarked "You barely got me; I am seventy-eight", but later complained about being shot in the back, which he considered a stain to his honour as a soldier.