Red Brigades
Encyclopedia
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy
, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead". Formed in 1967, the organisation sought to create a "revolution
ary" state through armed struggle, and to remove Italy from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Red Brigades attained notoriety in the 1970s and early 1980s with their violent attempts to destabilise Italy by acts of sabotage
, bank robberies, and kidnappings.
The group's most infamous act took place in 1978, when the second groups of the BR, headed by Mario Moretti
, kidnapped
the former Christian Democrat Prime Minister Aldo Moro
, who was trying to reach a compromesso storico, or "historic compromise", with the Communists. The kidnappers killed five members of Moro's entourage, and murdered Moro himself 54 days later. The BR barely survived the end years of the Cold War
following a split in 1984 and the arrest or flight of the majority of its members. In the 1980s, the group was broken up by Italian investigators, with the aid of several leaders under arrest who turned pentito
and assisted the authorities in capturing the other members. After the mass arrests in the late 1980s, the group slowly faded into insignificance. A majority of those leaders took advantage of a law that gave credits for renouncing the doctrine (dissociato status) and contributing to efforts by police and judiciary to prosecute its members ("collaboratore di giustizia", also known as pentito
).
, a student at the University of Trento
, his girlfriend Margherita (Mara) Cagol
and Alberto Franceschini
.
While the Trento group around Curcio had its main roots in the Sociology Department of the Catholic University, the Reggio Emilia group (around Franceschini) included mostly former members of the Communist Youth movement expelled from the parent party for extremist views In the beginning the Red Brigades were mainly active in Reggio Emilia
, and in large factories in Milan
, (such as Sit-Siemens, Pirelli and Magneti Marelli) and in Turin
(Fiat). Members sabotage
d factory equipment and broke into factory offices and trade union headquarters. In 1972, they carried out their first kidnapping: a factory foreman was held for some time but later released.
During this time the Red Brigades' activities were denied by far left political groups such as Lotta Continua
and Potere Operaio
(which were closer to the Autonomist movement). Although there has been an attempt to demonstrate any link between the Red Brigades and foreign State Security Services, nothing has been proved and such idea has always been rejected by all the militants that after years of prison decided to speak their truth in books, interviews etc. In June 1974, the Red Brigades committed their first homicide. Two members of the Italian neo-fascist party, Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) were killed in Padua during a raid to the MSI headquarters.
Most of the Italian leftish political parties of the time, including the Italian Communist Party (PCI
), denied the Red Brigades' involvement in the murder and even the Red Brigades' existence itself. However, according to the BR leaders, the BR received support by a large amount of people and this would be the reason of such a long existence for a military structure that counted a few hundreds of "effective members".
, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The arrest was made possible by "Frate Mitra", alias Silvano Girotto, a former monk who had infiltrated the BR for the Italian security services. Curcio was freed from prison by an armed commando of the Red Brigades, led by his wife Mara Cagol, but was rearrested some time later.
The Red Brigades then operated some high-profile political kidnappings (e.g., Genoa judge Mario Sossi) and kidnapped industrialists (e.g., Vallarino Gancia) in order to obtain ransom money which (together with bank robberies) were their main source of income.
, Genoa
, and Venice
, their numbers grew drastically and began to diversify in its criminal ventures. Bank robberies, kidnappings, drugs and arms trafficking were the major crimes. Its 1975 manifesto stated that its goal was a "concentrated strike against the heart of the State, because the state is an imperialist collection of multinational corporations". The "SIM" (Stato Imperialista delle Multinazionali) became a primary target.
In 1975, the Italian police discovered the farmhouse where industrialist Vallarino Gancia was kept prisoner by the Brigades (Cascina Spiotta). In the ensuing gunfight, two police officers were killed, as was Mara Cagol, Curcio's wife. That following April, the Red Brigades announced that they had set up a Communist Combatant Party to "guide the working class." Terrorist activities, especially against Carabinieri
and magistrate
s, increased considerably, in order to terrorize juries and cause mistrials in cases against imprisoned leaders of the organization. Also, since arrested members of the Brigades refused to be defended by lawyers, lawyers designated by the Courts to defend them ("difensori d' ufficio") were also targeted and killed.
In 1978, the Second BR, headed by Mario Moretti, kidnapped and murdered Christian Democrat Aldo Moro
, who was the key figure in negotiations aimed at extending the Government's parliamentary majority, by attaining a Historic Compromise
between the Italian Communist Party
and the Democrazia Cristiana. A team of Red Brigades members, using stolen Alitalia
airline company uniforms, ambushed Moro, killed five of Moro's bodyguards and took him captive.
The captors, headed by Moretti, sought the release of certain prisoners in exchange for Moro's safe release. The Government refused to negotiate with the captors, while Italian political forces took either a hard line ("linea della fermezza") or a more pragmatic approach ("linea del negoziato"). From his captivity, Moro sent letters to his family, to his political friends, to the Pope, pleading for a negotiated outcome.
After holding Moro for 54 days, the Brigades realized that the Government would not negotiate and, fearful of being discovered, decided to kill their prisoner. They placed him in a car and told him to cover himself with a blanket. Mario Moretti then shot him eleven times in the chest. Moro's body was left in the trunk of a car in Via Caetani, a site midway between the Christian Democratic Party and the Communist Party headquarters, as a last symbolic challenge to the police, who were keeping the entire nation, and Rome in particular, under strict surveillance. Moretti wrote in Brigate Rosse: una storia italiana that the murder of Moro was the ultimate expression of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary action. Original founder Alberto Franceschini wrote that those imprisoned members did not understand why Moro had been chosen as a target.
Aldo Moro's assassination caused a strong reaction against the Brigades by the Italian law enforcement and security forces. The murder of a popular political figure also drew condemnation from other Italian left-wing militant formations and even the imprisoned ex-leaders of the Brigades. The Brigades suffered a loss of support. These events were closely portrayed in the 2003 Italian film by Marco Bellocchio, Good Morning, Night
.
A crucial turning point was the murder, in 1979, of Guido Rossa, a member of the PCI and a trade union organizer. Rossa had observed the distribution of BR propaganda and had reported those involved to the police. He was shot and killed by the Brigades, this attack against a popular trade union organiser proved disastrous, totally alienating the factory worker base to which BR propaganda was primarily directed.
Also, Italian police made a large number of arrests in 1980: 12,000 far-left militants were detained while 300 fled to France and 200 to South America; a total of 600 people left Italy. Most leaders arrested (including, e.g., Faranda, Franceschini, Moretti, Morucci) either retracted their doctrine (as dissociati), or collaborated with investigators in the capture of other BR members (as "Collaboratori di giustizia), obtaining important reductions in prison sentences.
The most well-known collaboratore di giustizia was Patrizio Peci, one of the leaders of the Turin "column". In revenge, the Brigades assassinated his brother Roberto in 1981 significantly damaging the standing of the group and lowering them in the public's eyes to little more than a supposedly radical Cosa Nostra.
On April 7, 1979, the Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri
was arrested along with the other persons associated with the Autonomist movement, including Oreste Scalzone
. Padua
's Public Prosecutor, Pietro Calogero, accused those involved in the Autonomia movement of being the political wing of the Red Brigades. Negri was charged with a number of offences including leadership of the Red Brigades, masterminding the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro and plotting to overthrow the government. At the time, Negri was a political science professor at the University of Padua, visiting lecturer at Paris' École Normale Supérieure
. Thus, French philosophers Félix Guattari
and Gilles Deleuze
signed in November 1977 L'Appel des intellectuels français contre la répression en Italie (The Call of French Intellectuals Against Repression in Italy) in protest against Negri's imprisonment and Italian anti-terrorism legislation
.
A year later, Negri was exonerated from Aldo Moro's kidnapping. No link was ever established between Negri and the Red Brigades and almost all of the charges against him (including 17 murders) were dropped within months of his arrest due to lack of evidence.
Aldo Moro's assassination continues to haunt Italy today, and remains a significant event of the Cold War. In the 1980s-1990s, a Commission headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino
investigated acts of terrorism in Italy during the "Years of Lead", while various judicial investigations also took place, headed by Guido Salvini
and other magistrates.
apartment of US Army
Brigadier General
James L. Dozier
, then NATO Deputy Chief of Staff at Southern European land forces. The men kidnapped General Dozier and left his wife bound and chained in their apartment. He was held for 42 days until January 28, 1982, when an Italian anti-terrorist team rescued him from an apartment in Padua
. Dozier was the first American general to be kidnapped by terrorists and the first foreigner kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
's death in January 2007, Italian magistrate Carlo Mastelloni recalled in the Corriere della Sera
that the Abbé Pierre had "spontaneously testified" in the 1980s in support of a group of Italian activists who had fled to Paris and were involved with the Hyperion language school, directed by Vanni Mulinaris. Simone de Beauvoir
had also written a letter to Mastelloni, which has been kept in juridical archives. Some of those associated with the Hyperion School (which included Corrado Simioni, Vanni Mulinaris and Duccio Berio) were accused by the Italian authorities of being the "masterminds" of the BR, although they were all cleared afterwards.
After Vanni Mulinari's travel to Udine
and subsequent arrest by the Italian justice, the Abbé Pierre went to talk in 1983 with Italian President Sandro Pertini to plead Mulinari's cause. Mulinari had been imprisoned on a charge of assisting the BR. The Abbé had even observed eight days of a hunger strike
from May 26, 1984 to June 3 in the Cathedral of Turin
to protest the conditions suffered by "Brigadists" in Italian prisons and the imprisonment without trial of Vanni Mulinari, who was recognized as innocent some time afterwards. Mulinari's treatment was, according to the Abbé, a "violation of human rights
". La Repubblica
specified that Italian justice has recognized the innocence of all people close to the Hyperion School.
) and the minority of the Union of Combatant Communists (Red Brigades-UCC, led by Giovanni Senzani).
In 1984, the Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder of Leamon Hunt, United States chief of the Sinai
Multinational Force and Observer Group. In the same year, Curcio, Moretti, Iannelli and Bertolazzi, rejected the armed struggle as pointless.
In the 1980s, the arrests rate increased in Italy, including that of Senzani in 1982 and of Balzerani in 1985. In February 1986, the Red Brigades-PCC killed the ex-mayor of Florence Lando Conti. In March 1987, Red Brigades-UCC assassinated General Licio Giorgieri
in Rome. On April 16, 1988, in Forlì
, Red Brigades-PCC killed Italian senator Roberto Ruffilli, an advisor of Italian Prime Minister
Ciriaco de Mita
. After that, the group activities all but ended after massive arrests of its leadership. The BR dissolved themselves in 1988.
guaranteed immunity from extradition to BR members living in France who had made a break with their past, were not sentenced for violent crimes and had started a new life.
In 1998, Bordeaux
's appeal court decided that Sergio Tornaghi could not be extradited to Italy, on the grounds that Italian procedure would not let him be judged again, after a trial during his absence. In 2002, however, Paris extradited Paolo Persichetti, an ex-member of the Red Brigades who was teaching sociology, signaling for the first time a departure from the "Mitterrand doctrine
". In the 2000s, requests by Italian Justice for extradition from France involved several leftist activists, including Antonio Negri
, Cesare Battisti, and others.
While leftists had mostly fled to France, many neofascist activists involved in the strategy of tension, such as Vincenzo Vinciguerra
or Stefano Delle Chiaie
, fled to Spain; Delfo Zorzi, condemned for the Piazza Fontana bombing, was granted asylum and citizenship in Japan, while others fled to Argentina
(in particular Augusto Canchi, wanted by Italian justice for his role in the 1980 Bologna massacre
).
The issue of a general amnesty in Italy for these crimes is highly controversial and still source of dispute. Most political forces oppose it and, in particular, the associations of victims of terrorism and their family members are adamantly against it.
. On March 19, 2002, the same gun was used to kill professor Marco Biagi
, an economic advisor to Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi
. The Red Brigades-PCC again claimed responsibility. On 3 March 2003 two followers, Mario Galesi and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, started a firefight with a police patrol on a train at Castiglion Fiorentino station, near Arezzo. Galesi and Emanuele Petri (one of the policemen) were killed, Lioce was arrested. On October 23, 2003, Italian police arrested six members of the Red Brigades in early-dawn raids in Florence, Sardinia
, Rome and Pisa
in connection with the murder of Massimo D'Antona. On June 1, 2005, four members of the Red Brigades-PCC were condemned to life-sentence in Bologna for the murder of Marco Biagi
: Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, Marco Mezzasalma and Diana Blefari Melazzi.
Several figures from the 1970s, including philosopher Antonio Negri
who was wrongly accused of being the "mastermind" of the BR, have called for a new analysis of the events which happened during the "years of lead" in Italy.
On the other hand, BR founder Alberto Franceschini
declared after his release from an 18-year prison term that "The BR continue to exist because we never proceeded to their funeral", calling for truth from every involved party in order to be able to turn the page.
by the Ministry of Interior
.
A total of 75 people are thought to have been murdered by the BR. A majority of the murders were politically motivated, though a number of assassinations of random police and carabinieri officers took place, as well as a number of murders occurring during criminal ventures such as bank robberies and kidnappings.
and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Soviet and Czechoslovak small arms and explosives would have come from the Middle East via heroin traffickers along well established smuggling routes. Logistic support and training were allegedly carried out directly by the Czechoslovak StB both in Prague and at remote PLO training camps in North Africa and Syria
.
According to the Mitrokhin Archives, the Italian Communist Party lodged several complaints with the Soviet ambassador in Rome regarding Czechoslovak support of the Red Brigades, but the Soviets were either unwilling or unable to stop the StB. This was one of several contributing factors in ending the covert relationship that the Italian Communist Party
had with the KGB
culminating with a total break in 1979.
Italian economist Loretta Napoleoni
said in a TED Talk
that she spoke to a "part-timer" with the Red Brigades who claimed that he used to sail between Lebanon and Italy during summers, ferrying Soviet weapons for a fee from the PLO to Sardinia where the weapons were distributed to "other organizations in Europe."
The Italian RAI TV show La notte della Repubblica mentioned the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Israeli agents as early as 1974. Alberto Franceschini declared to the Commission on terrorism headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino
that some members of the group had been in contact with the MOSSAD
. He also reported a confidence by co-founder Renato Curcio
, according to whom Mario Moretti would be an infiltrated agent.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead". Formed in 1967, the organisation sought to create a "revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
ary" state through armed struggle, and to remove Italy from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Red Brigades attained notoriety in the 1970s and early 1980s with their violent attempts to destabilise Italy by acts of sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
, bank robberies, and kidnappings.
The group's most infamous act took place in 1978, when the second groups of the BR, headed by Mario Moretti
Mario Moretti
Mario Moretti is an Italian former terrorist. A leading member of the Red Brigades in the late 1970s, he was one of the kidnappers of Aldo Moro, president of Italy's largest party, Democrazia Cristiana, and several times premier, in 1978; he later confessed to have been the one who killed the...
, kidnapped
Kidnapping of Aldo Moro
The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro was a seminal event in Italian political history.On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day in which the new cabinet led by Giulio Andreotti would undergo the confidence vote at the Italian Parliament, the car of Aldo Moro, former prime minister and then...
the former Christian Democrat Prime Minister Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
, who was trying to reach a compromesso storico, or "historic compromise", with the Communists. The kidnappers killed five members of Moro's entourage, and murdered Moro himself 54 days later. The BR barely survived the end years of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
following a split in 1984 and the arrest or flight of the majority of its members. In the 1980s, the group was broken up by Italian investigators, with the aid of several leaders under arrest who turned pentito
Pentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
and assisted the authorities in capturing the other members. After the mass arrests in the late 1980s, the group slowly faded into insignificance. A majority of those leaders took advantage of a law that gave credits for renouncing the doctrine (dissociato status) and contributing to efforts by police and judiciary to prosecute its members ("collaboratore di giustizia", also known as pentito
Pentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
).
1967: the first BR generation
The Red Brigades were founded in August 1970 by Renato CurcioRenato Curcio
Renato Curcio is the former leader of the Italian left-wing militant organization, the Red Brigades .-Background:...
, a student at the University of Trento
University of Trento
The University of Trento is an Italian university located in the cities of Trento and Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research and international relations, as shown by Censis University Guide and by the Italian Ministry of...
, his girlfriend Margherita (Mara) Cagol
Margherita Cagol
Margherita Cagol was a former leader of the Italian left-wing militant organization, the Red Brigades . She was married to Renato Curcio.-Life:...
and Alberto Franceschini
Alberto Franceschini
Alberto Franceschini was a founder and leading member of the Italian left-wing militant organization, the Red Brigades , along with Renato Curcio, Margherita Cagol and Mario Moretti....
.
While the Trento group around Curcio had its main roots in the Sociology Department of the Catholic University, the Reggio Emilia group (around Franceschini) included mostly former members of the Communist Youth movement expelled from the parent party for extremist views In the beginning the Red Brigades were mainly active in Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia is an affluent city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has about 170,000 inhabitants and is the main comune of the Province of Reggio Emilia....
, and in large factories in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, (such as Sit-Siemens, Pirelli and Magneti Marelli) and in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
(Fiat). Members sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
d factory equipment and broke into factory offices and trade union headquarters. In 1972, they carried out their first kidnapping: a factory foreman was held for some time but later released.
During this time the Red Brigades' activities were denied by far left political groups such as Lotta Continua
Lotta Continua
Lotta Continua was a far left extra-parliamentary organization in Italy. It was founded in autumn 1969 by a split in the student-worker movement of Turin, which had started militant activity at the universities and factories such as Fiat...
and Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio
Potere Operaio was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1968 and 1973. Among the group's leaders were Antonio Negri, Franco Piperno, Oreste Scalzone and Valerio Morucci, who led its clandestine...
(which were closer to the Autonomist movement). Although there has been an attempt to demonstrate any link between the Red Brigades and foreign State Security Services, nothing has been proved and such idea has always been rejected by all the militants that after years of prison decided to speak their truth in books, interviews etc. In June 1974, the Red Brigades committed their first homicide. Two members of the Italian neo-fascist party, Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) were killed in Padua during a raid to the MSI headquarters.
Most of the Italian leftish political parties of the time, including the Italian Communist Party (PCI
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
), denied the Red Brigades' involvement in the murder and even the Red Brigades' existence itself. However, according to the BR leaders, the BR received support by a large amount of people and this would be the reason of such a long existence for a military structure that counted a few hundreds of "effective members".
1974 arrest of BR founders
In September 1974, Red Brigades founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested by General Carlo Alberto Dalla ChiesaCarlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was a general of the Italian carabinieri notable for campaigning against terrorism during the 1970s in Italy, and later assassinated by the Mafia in Palermo.-Biography:...
, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The arrest was made possible by "Frate Mitra", alias Silvano Girotto, a former monk who had infiltrated the BR for the Italian security services. Curcio was freed from prison by an armed commando of the Red Brigades, led by his wife Mara Cagol, but was rearrested some time later.
The Red Brigades then operated some high-profile political kidnappings (e.g., Genoa judge Mario Sossi) and kidnapped industrialists (e.g., Vallarino Gancia) in order to obtain ransom money which (together with bank robberies) were their main source of income.
Expansion and radicalization
After 1974, the Red Brigades expanded into RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, and Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, their numbers grew drastically and began to diversify in its criminal ventures. Bank robberies, kidnappings, drugs and arms trafficking were the major crimes. Its 1975 manifesto stated that its goal was a "concentrated strike against the heart of the State, because the state is an imperialist collection of multinational corporations". The "SIM" (Stato Imperialista delle Multinazionali) became a primary target.
In 1975, the Italian police discovered the farmhouse where industrialist Vallarino Gancia was kept prisoner by the Brigades (Cascina Spiotta). In the ensuing gunfight, two police officers were killed, as was Mara Cagol, Curcio's wife. That following April, the Red Brigades announced that they had set up a Communist Combatant Party to "guide the working class." Terrorist activities, especially against Carabinieri
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations, and is a branch of the armed forces.-Early history:...
and magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
s, increased considerably, in order to terrorize juries and cause mistrials in cases against imprisoned leaders of the organization. Also, since arrested members of the Brigades refused to be defended by lawyers, lawyers designated by the Courts to defend them ("difensori d' ufficio") were also targeted and killed.
Kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro
In 1978, the Second BR, headed by Mario Moretti, kidnapped and murdered Christian Democrat Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years....
, who was the key figure in negotiations aimed at extending the Government's parliamentary majority, by attaining a Historic Compromise
Historic Compromise
In Italian history, the Historic Compromise was an accommodation between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party in the 1970s, after the latter embraced eurocommunism under Enrico Berlinguer. The 1978 assassination of DC leader Aldo Moro put an end to the Compromesso storico...
between the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
and the Democrazia Cristiana. A team of Red Brigades members, using stolen Alitalia
Alitalia
Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. , in its later stages known as Alitalia - Linee Aeree Italiane S.p.A. in Extraordinary Administration, was the former Italian flag carrier...
airline company uniforms, ambushed Moro, killed five of Moro's bodyguards and took him captive.
The captors, headed by Moretti, sought the release of certain prisoners in exchange for Moro's safe release. The Government refused to negotiate with the captors, while Italian political forces took either a hard line ("linea della fermezza") or a more pragmatic approach ("linea del negoziato"). From his captivity, Moro sent letters to his family, to his political friends, to the Pope, pleading for a negotiated outcome.
After holding Moro for 54 days, the Brigades realized that the Government would not negotiate and, fearful of being discovered, decided to kill their prisoner. They placed him in a car and told him to cover himself with a blanket. Mario Moretti then shot him eleven times in the chest. Moro's body was left in the trunk of a car in Via Caetani, a site midway between the Christian Democratic Party and the Communist Party headquarters, as a last symbolic challenge to the police, who were keeping the entire nation, and Rome in particular, under strict surveillance. Moretti wrote in Brigate Rosse: una storia italiana that the murder of Moro was the ultimate expression of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary action. Original founder Alberto Franceschini wrote that those imprisoned members did not understand why Moro had been chosen as a target.
Aldo Moro's assassination caused a strong reaction against the Brigades by the Italian law enforcement and security forces. The murder of a popular political figure also drew condemnation from other Italian left-wing militant formations and even the imprisoned ex-leaders of the Brigades. The Brigades suffered a loss of support. These events were closely portrayed in the 2003 Italian film by Marco Bellocchio, Good Morning, Night
Good Morning, Night
Buongiorno, notte is an Italian film released in 2003 and directed by Marco Bellocchio. The title of the feature film, Good Morning, Night, is taken from a poem by Emily Dickinson.- Plot :...
.
A crucial turning point was the murder, in 1979, of Guido Rossa, a member of the PCI and a trade union organizer. Rossa had observed the distribution of BR propaganda and had reported those involved to the police. He was shot and killed by the Brigades, this attack against a popular trade union organiser proved disastrous, totally alienating the factory worker base to which BR propaganda was primarily directed.
Also, Italian police made a large number of arrests in 1980: 12,000 far-left militants were detained while 300 fled to France and 200 to South America; a total of 600 people left Italy. Most leaders arrested (including, e.g., Faranda, Franceschini, Moretti, Morucci) either retracted their doctrine (as dissociati), or collaborated with investigators in the capture of other BR members (as "Collaboratori di giustizia), obtaining important reductions in prison sentences.
The most well-known collaboratore di giustizia was Patrizio Peci, one of the leaders of the Turin "column". In revenge, the Brigades assassinated his brother Roberto in 1981 significantly damaging the standing of the group and lowering them in the public's eyes to little more than a supposedly radical Cosa Nostra.
On April 7, 1979, the Marxist philosopher Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
was arrested along with the other persons associated with the Autonomist movement, including Oreste Scalzone
Oreste Scalzone
Oreste Scalzone is an Italian Marxist intellectual and one of the founders of the communist organization Potere Operaio....
. Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
's Public Prosecutor, Pietro Calogero, accused those involved in the Autonomia movement of being the political wing of the Red Brigades. Negri was charged with a number of offences including leadership of the Red Brigades, masterminding the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro and plotting to overthrow the government. At the time, Negri was a political science professor at the University of Padua, visiting lecturer at Paris' École Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
. Thus, French philosophers Félix Guattari
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
signed in November 1977 L'Appel des intellectuels français contre la répression en Italie (The Call of French Intellectuals Against Repression in Italy) in protest against Negri's imprisonment and Italian anti-terrorism legislation
Anti-terrorism legislation
Anti-terrorism legislation designs various types of laws passed in the aim of fighting terrorism. They usually, if not always, follow specific bombings or assassinations...
.
A year later, Negri was exonerated from Aldo Moro's kidnapping. No link was ever established between Negri and the Red Brigades and almost all of the charges against him (including 17 murders) were dropped within months of his arrest due to lack of evidence.
Aldo Moro's assassination continues to haunt Italy today, and remains a significant event of the Cold War. In the 1980s-1990s, a Commission headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino is an Italian politician.Born in Lecce and a lawyer by profession, he was a Senator of the Republic from 1990 with the Italian Communist Party and the Democrats of the Left to 2001...
investigated acts of terrorism in Italy during the "Years of Lead", while various judicial investigations also took place, headed by Guido Salvini
Guido Salvini
Guido Salvini is an Italian judge, based in Milan. He issued European arrest warrants in 2005 against approximatively 20 CIA agents accused of having taken part in the abduction of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The case is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito affair...
and other magistrates.
Kidnapping of Brigadier General Dozier
On December 17, 1981, four members of the Red Brigades, posing as plumbers, invaded the VeronaVerona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
apartment of US Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
Brigadier General
Brigadier General
Brigadier general is a senior rank in the armed forces. It is the lowest ranking general officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of colonel and major general. When appointed to a field command, a brigadier general is typically in command of a brigade consisting of around 4,000...
James L. Dozier
James L. Dozier
James Lee Dozier is a retired US Army general officer. In December 1981, he was kidnapped by the leftist Italian Red Brigades Marxist terrorist group. He was rescued by Italian anti-terrorist forces after 42 days of captivity. General Dozier was the deputy Chief of Staff at NATO's Southern...
, then NATO Deputy Chief of Staff at Southern European land forces. The men kidnapped General Dozier and left his wife bound and chained in their apartment. He was held for 42 days until January 28, 1982, when an Italian anti-terrorist team rescued him from an apartment in Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
. Dozier was the first American general to be kidnapped by terrorists and the first foreigner kidnapped by the Red Brigades.
Mulinari's 1983 arrest
After the Abbé PierreAbbé Pierre
LAbbé Pierre, was a French Catholic priest, member of the Resistance during World War II, and deputy of the Popular Republican Movement . He founded in 1949 the Emmaus movement, which has the goal of helping poor and homeless people and refugees...
's death in January 2007, Italian magistrate Carlo Mastelloni recalled in the Corriere della Sera
Corriere della Sera
The Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper, published in Milan.It is among the oldest and most reputable Italian newspapers. Its main rivals are Rome's La Repubblica and Turin's La Stampa.- History :...
that the Abbé Pierre had "spontaneously testified" in the 1980s in support of a group of Italian activists who had fled to Paris and were involved with the Hyperion language school, directed by Vanni Mulinaris. Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
had also written a letter to Mastelloni, which has been kept in juridical archives. Some of those associated with the Hyperion School (which included Corrado Simioni, Vanni Mulinaris and Duccio Berio) were accused by the Italian authorities of being the "masterminds" of the BR, although they were all cleared afterwards.
After Vanni Mulinari's travel to Udine
Udine
Udine is a city and comune in northeastern Italy, in the middle of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic sea and the Alps , less than 40 km from the Slovenian border. Its population was 99,439 in 2009, and that of its urban area was 175,000.- History :Udine is the historical...
and subsequent arrest by the Italian justice, the Abbé Pierre went to talk in 1983 with Italian President Sandro Pertini to plead Mulinari's cause. Mulinari had been imprisoned on a charge of assisting the BR. The Abbé had even observed eight days of a hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
from May 26, 1984 to June 3 in the Cathedral of Turin
Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist (Turin)
Turin Cathedral is the major Roman Catholic church of Turin, northern Italy. Dedicated to Saint John the Baptist , it was built during 1491-1498 and it is adjacent to an earlier campanile...
to protest the conditions suffered by "Brigadists" in Italian prisons and the imprisonment without trial of Vanni Mulinari, who was recognized as innocent some time afterwards. Mulinari's treatment was, according to the Abbé, a "violation of human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
". La Repubblica
La Repubblica
la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
specified that Italian justice has recognized the innocence of all people close to the Hyperion School.
Red Brigades-PCC and Red Brigades-UCC 1981 split
In 1981, the Red Brigades had split into two factions: the majority faction of the Communist Combatant Party (Red Brigades-CCP, led by Barbara BalzeraniBarbara Balzerani
-Biography:Balzerani was born at Colleferro, in the province of Frosinone.In the 1970s she became a leader of the Red Brigades in Rome. She took part in several killings, such as that of Girolamo Minervini and the assassination of Aldo Moro's escort in Via Fani...
) and the minority of the Union of Combatant Communists (Red Brigades-UCC, led by Giovanni Senzani).
In 1984, the Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder of Leamon Hunt, United States chief of the Sinai
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai is a triangular peninsula in Egypt about in area. It is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa, effectively serving as a land bridge between two...
Multinational Force and Observer Group. In the same year, Curcio, Moretti, Iannelli and Bertolazzi, rejected the armed struggle as pointless.
In the 1980s, the arrests rate increased in Italy, including that of Senzani in 1982 and of Balzerani in 1985. In February 1986, the Red Brigades-PCC killed the ex-mayor of Florence Lando Conti. In March 1987, Red Brigades-UCC assassinated General Licio Giorgieri
Licio Giorgieri
Licio Giorgieri was an Italian air force general, who was killed by a faction the far-left terrorist organization Red Brigades.-Biography:Giorgieri was born in Trieste....
in Rome. On April 16, 1988, in Forlì
Forlì
Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre...
, Red Brigades-PCC killed Italian senator Roberto Ruffilli, an advisor of Italian Prime Minister
Prime minister of Italy
The Prime Minister of Italy is the head of government of the Italian Republic...
Ciriaco de Mita
Ciriaco de Mita
Ciriaco Luigi de Mita is an Italian politician. He served as the 47th Prime Minister of Italy from 1988 to 1989 and is currently Member of the European Parliament.-Biography:De Mita was born in Nusco, in the Avellinese hinterland....
. After that, the group activities all but ended after massive arrests of its leadership. The BR dissolved themselves in 1988.
Flight to France
In 1985 some Italian members living in France returned to Italy. The same year, French president François MitterrandFrançois Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
guaranteed immunity from extradition to BR members living in France who had made a break with their past, were not sentenced for violent crimes and had started a new life.
In 1998, Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
's appeal court decided that Sergio Tornaghi could not be extradited to Italy, on the grounds that Italian procedure would not let him be judged again, after a trial during his absence. In 2002, however, Paris extradited Paolo Persichetti, an ex-member of the Red Brigades who was teaching sociology, signaling for the first time a departure from the "Mitterrand doctrine
Mitterrand doctrine
The Mitterrand doctrine was a policy established in 1985 by French president François Mitterrand concerning Italian far-left terrorists who fled to France: those convicted for violent acts in Italy, but excluding "active, actual, bloody terrorism" during the "Years of Lead" would not be extradited...
". In the 2000s, requests by Italian Justice for extradition from France involved several leftist activists, including Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
, Cesare Battisti, and others.
While leftists had mostly fled to France, many neofascist activists involved in the strategy of tension, such as Vincenzo Vinciguerra
Vincenzo Vinciguerra
Vincenzo Vinciguerra is an Italian neo-fascist activist, a former member of the Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo . He is currently serving a life-sentence for the murder of three policemen by a car bomb in Peteano in 1972...
or Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
, fled to Spain; Delfo Zorzi, condemned for the Piazza Fontana bombing, was granted asylum and citizenship in Japan, while others fled to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
(in particular Augusto Canchi, wanted by Italian justice for his role in the 1980 Bologna massacre
Bologna massacre
The Bologna massacre was a terrorist bombing of the Central Station at Bologna, Italy, on the morning of Saturday, 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 200. The attack has been materially attributed to the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari...
).
The issue of a general amnesty in Italy for these crimes is highly controversial and still source of dispute. Most political forces oppose it and, in particular, the associations of victims of terrorism and their family members are adamantly against it.
New assassinations by new BR generation
A new group, with few links, if any, with the old BR, appeared in the late 1990s. The Red Brigades-PCC murdered in 1999 Massimo D'Antona, an advisor to the cabinet of Prime Minister Massimo D'AlemaMassimo D'Alema
Massimo D'Alema is an Italian politician. He is also a journalist and a former national secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left...
. On March 19, 2002, the same gun was used to kill professor Marco Biagi
Marco Biagi
Marco Biagi was an Italian jurist. A native of Bologna, he was professor of labour law and industrial relations at the University of Modena....
, an economic advisor to Italian Prime Minister
Prime minister of Italy
The Prime Minister of Italy is the head of government of the Italian Republic...
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi , also known as Il Cavaliere – from knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour which he received in 1977 – is an Italian politician and businessman who served three terms as Prime Minister of Italy, from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the...
. The Red Brigades-PCC again claimed responsibility. On 3 March 2003 two followers, Mario Galesi and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, started a firefight with a police patrol on a train at Castiglion Fiorentino station, near Arezzo. Galesi and Emanuele Petri (one of the policemen) were killed, Lioce was arrested. On October 23, 2003, Italian police arrested six members of the Red Brigades in early-dawn raids in Florence, Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
, Rome and Pisa
Pisa
Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
in connection with the murder of Massimo D'Antona. On June 1, 2005, four members of the Red Brigades-PCC were condemned to life-sentence in Bologna for the murder of Marco Biagi
Marco Biagi
Marco Biagi was an Italian jurist. A native of Bologna, he was professor of labour law and industrial relations at the University of Modena....
: Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, Marco Mezzasalma and Diana Blefari Melazzi.
Several figures from the 1970s, including philosopher Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri is an Italian Marxist sociologist and political philosopher.Negri is best-known for his co-authorship of Empire, and secondarily for his work on Spinoza. Born in Padua, he became a political philosophy professor in his hometown university...
who was wrongly accused of being the "mastermind" of the BR, have called for a new analysis of the events which happened during the "years of lead" in Italy.
On the other hand, BR founder Alberto Franceschini
Alberto Franceschini
Alberto Franceschini was a founder and leading member of the Italian left-wing militant organization, the Red Brigades , along with Renato Curcio, Margherita Cagol and Mario Moretti....
declared after his release from an 18-year prison term that "The BR continue to exist because we never proceeded to their funeral", calling for truth from every involved party in order to be able to turn the page.
Statistics
According to Clarence A. Martin, the BR were credited with 14,000 acts of violence in the first ten years of the group's existence. According to statisticsStatistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
by the Ministry of Interior
Ministry of Interior (Italy)
The Ministry of Interior is a government agency of Italy, headquartered in Rome. It is controlled by the Minister of the Interior. As of November 16th, 2011, Anna Maria Cancellieri is the minister.-External links:* *...
.
A total of 75 people are thought to have been murdered by the BR. A majority of the murders were politically motivated, though a number of assassinations of random police and carabinieri officers took place, as well as a number of murders occurring during criminal ventures such as bank robberies and kidnappings.
Allegations of international contacts
According to Ion Pacepa, Red Brigades primary support allegedly came from the Czechoslovak StBState Security (Czechoslovakia)
In former Czechoslovakia, State Security or StB / ŠtB, was a plainclothes secret police force from 1945 to its dissolution in 1990...
and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Soviet and Czechoslovak small arms and explosives would have come from the Middle East via heroin traffickers along well established smuggling routes. Logistic support and training were allegedly carried out directly by the Czechoslovak StB both in Prague and at remote PLO training camps in North Africa and Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
.
According to the Mitrokhin Archives, the Italian Communist Party lodged several complaints with the Soviet ambassador in Rome regarding Czechoslovak support of the Red Brigades, but the Soviets were either unwilling or unable to stop the StB. This was one of several contributing factors in ending the covert relationship that the Italian Communist Party
Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...
had with the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
culminating with a total break in 1979.
Italian economist Loretta Napoleoni
Loretta Napoleoni
Loretta Napoleoni is an Italian economist, author, journalist and political analyst. She is an expert on the financing of terrorism and is well known internationally for having calculated the size of the terror economy.-Life and career:...
said in a TED Talk
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
that she spoke to a "part-timer" with the Red Brigades who claimed that he used to sail between Lebanon and Italy during summers, ferrying Soviet weapons for a fee from the PLO to Sardinia where the weapons were distributed to "other organizations in Europe."
The Italian RAI TV show La notte della Repubblica mentioned the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Israeli agents as early as 1974. Alberto Franceschini declared to the Commission on terrorism headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino is an Italian politician.Born in Lecce and a lawyer by profession, he was a Senator of the Republic from 1990 with the Italian Communist Party and the Democrats of the Left to 2001...
that some members of the group had been in contact with the MOSSAD
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
. He also reported a confidence by co-founder Renato Curcio
Renato Curcio
Renato Curcio is the former leader of the Italian left-wing militant organization, the Red Brigades .-Background:...
, according to whom Mario Moretti would be an infiltrated agent.
Recent developments
In October 2007, a former BR commander was arrested after committing a bank robbery while out-of-prison on good conduct terms. Cristoforo Piancone, who is serving a life sentence for six murders, managed to steal €170,000 from the bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena with an accomplice, on October 1, 2007.See also
- Communist terrorismCommunist terrorismCommunist terrorism are actions carried out by groups which adhere to a Marxist-Leninist or Maoist ideology which have been described as terrorism. State actions carried out by the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, North Korea and the actions of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia have all been...
- Informal Anarchist FederationInformal Anarchist FederationInformal Anarchist Federation , not to be confused with the Italian Anarchist Federation is an Italian insurrectionary anarchist organization...
- October 22 GroupOctober 22 GroupThe October 22 Group was an Italian terrorist grouping, instituted on October 22, 1969.It was led by Mario Rossi, who received a life sentence in 1973 for killing a messenger in September 1971....
- Operation GladioOperation GladioOperation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government...
- Prima LineaPrima LineaPrima Linea was an Italian Marxist-Leninist terrorist group of the 1970s. It was formed in 1976 by members of hard-line factions within the far left, extra-parliamentary organization Lotta Continua, which disbanded that year, together with members of Potere Operaio and of other far left groups...
Further reading
- Giovanni Fasanella and Alberto Franceschini (with a postface from judge Rosario Priore, who investigated on Aldo Moro's death), Che cosa sono le BR I Miserabili ( "BRIGADES ROUGES. L'Histoire secrète des Red Brigades racontée par leur fondateur, Alberto Franceschini. Entretien avec Giovanni Fasanella." Editions Panama, 2005 a review by Le MondeLe MondeLe Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
and another review by L'HumanitéL'HumanitéL'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International... - A Giovanni Fasanella's bibliography
- Terrorist Group Profiles, Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School.
- Antonio Cerella, Il ritorno della violenza - Le BR dal ventennio rosso al XXI secolo, Roma: Il Filo, 2007.
- Amedeo Benedetti, Il linguaggio delle nuove Brigate Rosse, Genova: Erga, 2002.
- Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinsky. Europe's Red Terrorists: The fighting Communist Organizations. Routledge, October 1992.
External links
- Brigate Rosse - Fatti, Documenti e Personaggi - archives and documentation
- Chris Aronson Beck, Reggie Emilia, Lee Morris, and Ollie Patterson, Strike One to Educate One Hundred: The Rise of the Red Brigades in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Seeds Beneath the Snow, 1986. —Sympathetic appraisal of the Red Brigades.