The truth about Aldo Moro's murder? | Euronews The truth about Aldo Moro's murder? Now Reading: The truth about Aldo Moro's murder? Today's Top Stories last updated: 09/05/2008 Euronews Thirty years ago this month, the extreme left terrorist group, the Red Brigades murdered former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro who they’d kidnapped and held for nearly two months. Moro was the head of the Christian Democratic Party, which was moving towards a parliamentary coalition with the Italian Communists, a move opposed by some in the far left and which worried western power, particularly the US. Italy’s interior minister at the time was Francesco Cossiga, who took a hard line and refused to negotiate with the Red Brigades for Moro’s release. In an interview with Cossiga, EuroNews has tried to get at the truth of an incredibly tangled tale involving allegations of CIA involvement and claims of vital clues sent via a Ouija board. EuroNews : “You’ve been accused of refusing to negotiate with the Red Brigades, because you actually wanted Moro to be killed.” Francesco Cossiga: “Why would I have wanted Moro’s death?

If I hadn’t refused to negotiate the state would have collapsed and we would have found ourselves in a crisis, which it would have been very difficult to get out of. And on top of that I was nothing compared to someone like Moro. EuroNews: “There are some who say that as long as Cossiga and Andreotti are alive, the truth about what really happened with Moro will never been known.” Cossiga: “There are some who don’t want to accept this one thing: that Aldo Moro was killed by the Red Brigades. Some in the former Christian Democratic Party – who turned Moro into an icon, a left-winger, an enemy of the United States – they don’t want to accept that Moro was killed by people from the left. It must inevitably be that he was killed by the right, by the Americans, by the CIA. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work for them.” EuroNews: “You never believed Italian politician Romano Prodi’s explanation that he heard the name of the street where Moro was held at a seance.

Why would Prodi lie about that?” Cossiga: “He didn’t lie, he said that because he didn’t want to reveal his sources, especially at a time like that. But even now, if he revealed who told him, I don’t know how long his informant would remain alive. He and the others invented this story of a seance and words spelled out on Ouija board to be able to make the information public and protect their source.” EuroNews: “A US hostage negotiator, Steve Pieczenik, who you brought to Italy to advise on getting Moro released, has said that a statement – supposedly from the Red Brigades – that Moro’s body was in Lake Duchessa, 100 kilometres north of Rome was false and put out by the government. He implied that statement was intended to test what Italian public opinion would be to Moro’s death.” Cossiga: “It’s important to note that after the Lake Duchessa message, the resistance to negotiating weakened considerably: it was then that the leaders of the Christian Democratic Party, including me – who had decided on this tough, no negotiation policy – changed their approach. It was then that the Socialists started negotiations.

The Socialists did not trust us, and wanted to carry out the negotiations on their own. If they had talked to me about who they made contact with, we would probably have been able to find where Moro was being held.” EuroNews: “In France the so-called Mitterrand Doctrines, under which Italian far-left activists who fled to France were not extradited, seems no longer to be in place. Is France collaborating with Italy over the extradition of alleged terrorists? Cossiga: “You want my opinion? So many years have passed. You know I’m the person who was branded a Nazi, and accused of being responsible for torture and ordering killings, and lots, lots worse. I always felt there should be a blanket amnesty, that we should draw a line under the whole period when it was almost like a civil war, rather than reviewing the individual cases.” EuroNews: “One of those France wouldn’t extradite was novelist Cesare Battisti, is he also a murderer?” Cossiga: “He’s both. Being one doesn’t exclude being the other.

It’s as if you’d asked me if Caravaggio was a major painter or a violent man, who killed someone in a bar fight : he’s one and the same.” EuroNews: “Outside Italy, Berlusconi’s election victory has been greeted with irony, scorn, even some embarrassment. Are those other countries being snobbish, or is Italy really an anomaly?” Cossiga: “The first person to telephone him was Spain’s Prime Minister Zapatero. The second, who reacted enthusiastically, was Wilfried Martens, the President of the centre-right European People’s Party. Tony Blair, who was in Rome at the time, met with the left-wingers Massimo D’Alema, Walter Veltroni, and Francesco Rutelli, but who did he have dinner with? Mr Berlusconi. And it’s important to note that I didn’t vote for him. And you must keep in mind, I know the English: they are extremely snobbish.” EuroNews: “You’ve said that the exclusion of the radical left from Parliament could create the right conditions for terrorism to reappear. Are there any indications that could happen?” Cossiga: “The radical left took the extreme left as its reference point.

I remember a big rally in Genoa, in memory of Carlo Giuliani, the anti-G8 demonstrator shot dead by police in 2001, a gathering which was addressed by the Senate leader, Bertinotti. He gave a very rousing speech and was enthusiastically received. The police did not intervene and at the end Bertinotti said: ‘Now, everyone stay calm and go home’ and there was no trouble. But these days, who would say something like that to them? Veltroni or Rutelli? Veltroni who is known as an admirer of Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Obama, or Rutelli, who is the spokesman for the Italian Episcopal Conference? You think they’d listen to them? Dream on!” Share this article: Moro, Aldo Encyclopedia > History > Biographies > Italian History: Biographies Aldo Moro Moro, Aldo (älˈdō môˈrō) [ key ], 1916–78, Italian political leader. A lawyer, he entered national politics in 1946, when he was elected to the constituent assembly as a member of the Christian Democratic party.

As minister of justice (1955–57), he worked to reform the prison system, strengthening regulations forbidding corporal punishment and improving food, hygiene, and sanitary conditions. He was political secretary of the Christian Democratic party from 1959 to 1963. In Dec., 1963, he became prime minister, a post he held until 1968. He later served as minister of foreign affairs. During the 1970s, he was the leader of the effort to achieve a rapprochement with the Communist party. Moro was kidnapped and assassinated by the terrorist Red Brigades. See R. Drake, The Aldo Moro Murder Case (1996). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. BBC ON THIS DAY | 16 | 1978: Aldo Moro snatched at gunpoint 1978: Aldo Moro snatched at gunpoint Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro has been kidnapped in Rome.

Mr Moro's escort of five police bodyguards were killed when he was snatched at gunpoint from a car near a cafe in the morning rush-hour. Chief police investigator Signor Moro said 12 gunmen took part in the attack on the former prime minister as he was being driven to parliament. Police have set up dozens of roadblocks and all exits from the city are being watched. Helicopters are hovering overhead and anti-terrorist officers have been sent to the airport. The extreme left-wing Red Brigade, in a telephone call to a Rome newspaper, has said it kidnapped the Christian Democratic leader, 61. We kidnapped Aldo Moro Red Brigade spokesman A spokesman said: "We kidnapped Aldo Moro. He is only our first victim. We shall hit at the heart of the state." The man demanded that the Turin trial of Renato Curcio, who is suspected of leading the Red Brigade, and 14 others accused of membership of the group should be suspended. Witnesses reported seeing a white Fiat car move in front of Mr Moro's vehicle, along with a man on a motorbike. The Fiat braked hard and Mr Moro's car crashed into it.

Gunmen jumped out of the Fiat and others who had been waiting nearby raised pistols and sub-machine guns. Trade unions have called a 24-hour general strike and workers have left many shops and offices in the city in a shocked reaction to the kidnapping of the much-respected statesman. Investigators are examining spent bullet cases at the scene of the crime and among guns seized they found "a rarely used Soviet weapon". Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti has condemned those who took Mr Moro, saying they were "destroying the fabric of the nation and threatening to make it ungovernable". The Murder of Aldo Moro was a CIA decision. | INSIDER The Murder of Aldo Moro was a CIA decision. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States.

While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.” Through NATO, working with various Western European intelligence agencies, the CIA set up a network of stay behind “secret armies” which were responsible for dozens of terrorist atrocities across Western Europe over decades. This report will focus on the stay behind army in Italy, as it is the most documented. Its codename was Operation Gladio, the ‘Sword’. An Overview The Purpose of the ‘Stay Behind’ Armies In the early 1950s, the United States began training networks of “stay behind” volunteers in Western Europe, so that in the event of a Soviet invasion, they would “gather intelligence, open escape routes and form resistance movements.” The CIA financed and advised these groups, later working in tandem with western European military intelligence units under the coordination of a NATO committee. In 1990, Italian and Belgian investigators started researching the links between these “stay behind armies” and the occurrence of terrorism in Western Europe for a period of 20 years. ‘Secret Armies’ or Terrorist Groups?

These “stay behind” armies colluded with, funded and often even directed terrorist organizations throughout Europe in what was termed a “strategy of tension” with the aim of preventing a rise of the left in Western European politics. NATO’s “secret armies” engaged in subversive and criminal activities in several countries.

In Turkey in 1960, the stay behind army, working with the army, staged a coup d’état and killed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes; in Algeria in 1961, the French stay-behind army staged a coup with the CIA against the French government of Algiers, which ultimately failed; in 1967, the Greek stay-behind army staged a coup and imposed a military dictatorship; in 1971 in Turkey, after a military coup, the stay-behind army engaged in “domestic terror” and killed hundreds; in 1977 in Spain, the stay behind army carried out a massacre in Madrid; in 1980 in Turkey, the head of the stay behind army staged a coup and took power; in 1985 in Belgium, the stay behind attacked and shot shoppers randomly in supermarkets, killing 28; in Switzerland in 1990, the former head of the Swiss stay behind wrote the US Defense Department he would reveal “the whole truth,” and was found the next day stabbed to death with his own bayonet; and in 1995, England revealed that the MI6 and SAS helped set up stay behind armies across

 Western Europe.

The Birth of Operation Gladio A ‘Strategy of Tension’ In 1990, the Italian Prime Minister had confirmed that Italy’s “stay behind” army, termed “Gladio” (Sword), existed since 1958, with the approval of the Italian government. In the early 1970s, Italy’s communist support was growing, so the government turned to a “Strategy of Tension” using the Gladio network. At a top secret 1972 Gladio meeting, one official referred to making a “pre-emptive attack” on the Communists. As the Guardian reported, links between Gladio in Italy, all three Italian secret services and Italy’s P2 Masonic Lodge were well documented, as the head of each intelligence unit was a member of the P2 Lodge. Setting up the Network In 1949, the CIA helped set up the Italian secret armed forces intelligence unit, named SIFAR, staffed in part with former members of Mussolini’s secret police. It later changed its name to SID.

At the end of World War 2, a former Nazi collaborator, Licio Gelli, was facing execution for his activities during the war, but managed to escape by joining the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. In the 1950s, Gelli was recruited by SIFAR. Gelli was also head of the P2 Masonic Lodge in Italy, and in 1969, he developed close ties with General Alexander Haig, who was then Assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. Through this network, Gelli became chief intermediary between the CIA and General De Lorenzo, Chief of the SID. Gladio Creates ‘Tension’ Gladio was involved in a silent coup d’état in Italy, when General Giovanni de Lorenzo forced the Italian Socialist Ministers to leave the government. On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded at the National Agrarian Bank, which killed 17 people and wounded 88 others. That afternoon, three more bombs exploded in Rome and Milan.

US intelligence was informed ahead of time of the bombing, but did not inform the Italian authorities.[6] In 2000, a former Italian Secret Service General stated that the CIA “gave its tacit approval to a series of bomb attacks in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s.” The bombing was linked to two neofascists and to an SID agent. Testifying in a court case trying four men accused of involvement in the 1969 bank bombing in Milan, General Gianadelio Maletti, former head of military counter-intelligence from 1971 to 1975, stated that his unit discovered evidence that explosives were supplied to a right wing Italian terrorist group from Germany, and that US intelligence may have aided in the transfer of explosives.

He was quoted as saying that the CIA, “following the directives of its government, wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left and, for this purpose, it may have made use of rightwing terrorism,” and that, “I believe this is what happened in other countries as well.” The Report The Italian government released a 300-page report on Gladio operations in Italy in 2000, documenting connections with the United States. It declared that the US was responsible for inspiring a “strategy of tension.” In examining why those who committed the bombings in Italy were rarely caught, the report said, “those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”[10] The Red Brigades The Red Brigades were a leftist Italian terrorist organization that was formed in 1970. In 1974, Red Brigade founders Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini were arrested.

Alberto Franceschini later accused a top member of the Red Brigades, Mario Moretti, of turning them in, and that both Moretti and another leading Red Brigade member, Giovanni Senzani, were spies for the Italian and US secret services. Moretti rose up through the ranks of the Red Brigades as a result of the arrest of the two founders. The Red Brigades and the CIA The Red Brigades worked closely with the Hyperion Language School in Paris, which was founded by Corrado Simioni, Duccio Berio and Mario Moretti. Corrado Simoni had worked for the CIA at Radio Free Europe, Duccio Berio had been supplying the Italian SID with information of leftist groups and Mario Moretti, apart from being accused by the Red Brigades founders as being an intelligence asset, also happened to be the mastermind and murderer of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro.

An Italian police report referred to the Hyperion Language School as “the most important CIA office in Europe.” The Murder of Aldo Moro Moro Makes Powerful Enemies Aldo Moro, who served as Italy’s Prime Minister from 1963 until 1968 and later, from 1973 until 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades in 1978, while still a prominent politician in the Christian Democrat Party. When he was kidnapped, Moro was on his way to Parliament to vote on inaugurating a new government, of which he negotiated, for the first time since 1947, to be backed by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Moro’s policy of working with and bringing the Communists into the government was denounced by both the USSR and the United States. Kissinger’s Threat Moro was held for 55 days before his eventual murder. The reasoning was for his plan to bring the Communist Party into the government. Four years prior to his death, in 1974, Moro was on a visit as Italian Prime Minister, to the United States.

While there, he met with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who told Moro, “`You must abandon your policy of bringing all the political forces in your country into direct collaboration… or you will pay dearly for it.” Moro was “Sacrificed” Steve Pieczenik, a former State Department hostage negotiator and international crisis manager, “claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro.” Pieczenik “said that Moro had been “sacrificed” for the “stability” of Italy.” He had been sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day of Moro’s kidnapping to be part of a crisis committee, of which he said was “jolted into action by the fear that Moro would reveal state secrets in an attempt to free himself.” The action the committee took was to leak a memo saying that Moro was dead, and to have the memo attributed to the Red Brigades.

The purpose of this was to “prepare the Italian public for the worst and to let the Red Brigades know that the state would not negotiate for Moro, and considered him already dead.” In a documentary on the subject, Pieczenik stated that, “The decision was made in the fourth week of the kidnapping, when Moro’s letters became desperate and he was about to reveal state secrets,” and that, “It was an extremely difficult decision, but the one who made it in the end was interior minister Francesco Cossiga, and, apparently, also prime minister Giulio Andreotti.” Moro’s Letters Among Moro’s released letters, which he was writing while in captivity, he stated that he feared that a shadow organization, with “other secret services of the West … might be implicated in the destabilisation of our country.” During his interrogation while in captivity, Moro even referred to “Nato’s anti-guerrilla activities.” However, the Red Brigades did not use this information, perhaps because, according to the founders of the Red Brigades, the leader of the organization at the time of Moro’s kidnapping, Mario Moretti, was working for the Italian or US intelligence services. Maverick Journalist Killed by President?

Shortly after Moro’s death, Italian journalist, Mino Pecorelli, a man with “excellent secret service contacts,” voiced his suspicion in a 1978 article that Moro’s death was linked to Gladio, which was not officially acknowledged until 1990. A year after Moro’s death, Pecorelli was shot dead in Rome. He claimed that the kidnapping of Moro was committed by a “lucid superpower.” In 2002, former seven-term Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, was convicted of “ordering” Pecorelli’s murder. Pecorelli was about to publish a book “containing damaging criticisms of [Prime Minister Giulio] Andreotti by murdered Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.” The Bologna Bombing On the morning of August 2, 1980, Italy experienced its worst-ever terrorist attack at Bologna train station, which killed 85 people, and wounded more than 200 others. A long and complicated investigation was undertaken, and eventually, a trial began. In 1988, four right-wing terrorists were sentenced to life in prison.

Two other defendants were convicted of slandering the investigation, “Francesco Pazienza, a former financier linked to several criminal cases in Italy, and Licio Gelli, the former grandmaster of the so-called P-2 Masonic lodge.” This is the very same Licio Gelli who happened to be a CIA intermediary for the head of Italian intelligence for the Gladio network. Although later on, Gelli was acquitted of the charges. Publié il y a 4th August 2014 par Victor The life in death of Aldo Moro | The Economist The life in death of Aldo Moro Italy's years of terror in the 1970s remain a subject for books, and even opera Aug 15th 2002 Tweet IN ITALY, almost nothing seems straightforward. In a country where public life is ruled even more than elsewhere by ideology, corruption, back-scratching and hidden interests, the basic who-what-when-and-where of fact-driven reporting is all too easily swamped by the beguiling question of why.

Looking for motives, usually secret, is a quest of such endless fascination that the Italian press even has a name for it: dietrologia or behind-the-scenes-ology, the study of what you can't see. No event in modern Italy has provided as much material for conspiratorialists as the kidnap and murder in 1978 of the leader of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades, a far-left terrorist group. Among its many repercussions, big and small, terrorism seized the attention of Leonardo Sciascia, a celebrated Sicilian author and politician who had already written extensively about that other threat to the authority of the Italian state, the mafia. The short book he wrote after the Moro affair quickly became, for some, a dietrological handbook. An extended edition of Sacha Rabinovitch's translation has just been published by Granta Books. Moro was kidnapped one spring morning as he left the building where he lived on the Via Forte Trionfale in Rome. All five of his bodyguards were killed in the attack. He was held (probably in the city), put up for trial by a so-called people's court and then shot in the head.

Fifty-four days after he was kidnapped, Moro's body was found, following a tip-off, in the back of a Renault 4 that had been parked, without difficulty, in the crowded heart of the city. In this section Reprints Moro's captors allowed him to write to his political colleagues and to read what they were saying about him in the newspapers. He begged them to consider negotiating with the terrorists, who offered to return him alive in exchange for the release of 13 fellow extremists on trial in Turin. Opinion was divided. Most Christian Democrats, as well as the Communist Party, were against bargaining with terror. Moro's colleagues who favoured this line believed he was writing under duress or that he had lost his reason. When he realised that their view had prevailed, his letters turned to despair and rage. These anguished letters encouraged countless conspiracy theories. Why would Christian Democrats abandon one of their own? For more than 30 years, they had monopolised power and blocked reform. Yet change was now inevitable. Moro, with his gloomy eyes and air of unfathomably patient ennui, was a master of obfuscation.

As Sciascia observes, the principle of changing everything to change nothing, which Lampedusa's prince-hero espouses in “The Leopard”, could have applied perfectly to Moro. Yet, whatever his ultimate goal, by 1978, he had broken the shell of Christian Democratic politics and made a pact with the left, the compromesso storico, drawing the Communists into the arena of national government as responsible partners for the first time. Find the motive Many people in Italy, and some in Washington, feared and disliked this idea, and—although Italian politics has moved on—the belief has never entirely died that Moro was sacrificed on the altar of cold-war politics, perhaps even with a nod from America. In 1986, Giuseppe Ferrara made a film, “L'Affare Moro”, starring Gian Maria Volonte, which presented Moro as the victim of a power struggle among Christian Democrats. Sciascia was too sophisticated to make so crude a conspiratorial assumption, but his book remains grimly fascinating for the combination of intrigue and incompetence it lays bare. It is difficult to remember quite how terrified Italians were in the 1970s—the anni di piombo or years of lead.

That Moro was kidnapped by a disciplined unit in a country where organisation and efficiency were unknown must have meant that the Red Brigades had official sanction and foreign help. So many believed. That he could be kidnapped by a small band of nihilists who were more lucky than disciplined and killed because the Italian police were too inept and ill-led to find him was hard for many to swallow, even though that was more or less what the judges in all the five trials following the murder concluded. Sciascia's book will soon be 25 years old. But Moro's murder and homegrown terrorism in general continue to trouble the Italian imagination. The broad canvas of Francesca Marciano's new novel, “Casa Rossa”, which Longanesi will publish in Italy next spring, stretches from fascism to the Red Brigades. It opens in the south—in Moro's native Puglia as it happens—where Alina, the heroine, is packing up the red-walled family house, sorting through three generations of violence and domestic betrayal: her grandmother's, her father's and, most of all, that of her sister, Isabella, who is in thrall to her lover, a terrorist.

He and his friends shelter in the family house, but when, after a tip-off, they are tried and jailed, Alina too receives a sentence of sorts: any romantic or professional life is put on hold by the draining routine of weekly visits to her sister in prison. As in her earlier book, “Rules of the Wild”, Ms Marciano casts a sharp eye on the society that surrounds the family of the Casa Rossa. Her Italy is full of lies. The big ones stop the nation from facing the world; the small have the advantage of helping the world go round. But the search for truth takes courage, and the lesson learned in her novel is that the violence of the anni di piombo achieved nothing. Giving the victim voice The emotional intensity of opera offers yet another approach to Italy's years of lead. “Non Guardate al Domani”, a competition entry by Filippo del Corno, who composed the music, and Angelo Miotta, a journalist who did the libretto, treats Moro's capture and death virtually as a passion play.

Employing Moro's letters to his party colleagues and to his wife as the spine of the work, it focuses less on behind-the-scenes intrigue than on the transformation of Moro himself in the wilderness of captivity, as he is obliged to confront his approaching end and examine his soul. At the same time, we hear in counterpoint the grey, obfuscating language of politics that Moro and his fellows use amongst themselves. This work, which it is hoped will be staged in Italy next year, takes the Moro affair out of the world of conspiracy into the realm of religious myth.

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 Francesco Cossiga, has resigned.

Italians stopped work to pay tribute to Mr Moro, leader of the ruling Christian Democrat Party who was twice prime minister and considered the chief candidate for president. A stain of blood that dishonours our country Pope Paul VI on the murder of Aldo Moro He was also the architect of a plan to include the Communists in government for the first time in Italy's history - a plan which came into being the day after he was captured 55 days ago. Mr Moro was kidnapped on 16 March after left-wing Red Brigade gunmen ambushed his car killing his chauffeur and five policemen. For eight weeks, they held him at a secret location in Rome allowing him to send letters to his family and fellow politicians begging the government to negotiate with his captors. They demanded the release of 13 Red Brigade members. It is reported that in the last few days the kidnappers told Mr Moro's family they would release him if just one of their gang were released. The government, under President Giulio Andreotti, resolutely refused all pleas from family, friends, even the Pope himself to concede to any demands.

Eight weeks after he was taken, his body was found riddled with bullets in the boot of a red Renault 5 parked strategically between the headquarters of the ruling Christian Democrat Party and Communist Party HQ in central Rome. When news of his death broke out, crowds gathered round the car and police had to force their way through to let Mr Cossiga identify the body. In a public statement, Mr Cossiga then said he was responsible for the decision not to negotiate with the kidnappers and was now stepping down from his post. About 100,000 people crammed into the St John Lateran square in Rome to protest against the killing holding up banners that read "Murderers" and black-bordered photos of Mr Moro. The crowd chanted "Moro lives" and union leaders made emotional speeches calling for a united front against terrorism. Pope Paul VI, a personal friend of Mr Moro who had pleaded with the government to negotiate with the Red Brigade, said the murder was "a stain of blood that dishonours our country". The pontiff was addressing Italy's parliament which today voted in tough new anti-terrorist legislation aimed at the Red Brigade.

Red Brigades | Mapping Militant Organizations Mapping Militant Organizations 1984 First Attack September 17, 1970: The Red Brigades set fire to the car of a factory manager in Milan. (0 killed) [1] Last Attack April 16, 1988: The Red Brigades kidnapped a chemical engineer in Mestre. (No reported casualties) [2] Updated June 27, 2012 Narrative Summary The Red Brigades was Italy's largest, longest lasting, and most broadly diffused left-wing terrorist group. At its peak the organization had thousands of active members and supporters, with its strongest presence in the industrial cities of Northern Italy. [3] It sought to overthrow the democratic Italian state and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat. Its primary targets were symbols of capitalism and the Italian state. These included politicians, especially those of the center-right Christian Democratic party, law enforcement, and factories. The organization cast its armed activities as acts of self-defense, undertaken on behalf of workers facing repression from factory bosses and police.

[4] The first pamphlet signed by the Red Brigades – then using the singular "Red Brigade," or "Brigata Rossa" – appeared at a Sit-Siemens plant in Milan in 1970 [5] , but the roots of the organization extend back to the late 1960s, as student and worker demonstrations spread throughout Italy and protestors increasingly clashed violently with the police. The fall of 1968, known as the "autunno caldo" or "hot autumn," marked a high point in such violence as well as an organizational turning point as workers began to form collectives as alternatives to existing trade unions. The Red Brigades' founders are believed to have decided to take up arms during a November 28, 1969 meeting of the Metropolitan Political Collective (Collettivo Politico Metropolitano), a coordinating group of leftist student and worker movements, in Chiavari in the province of Genoa. [6] Some two weeks later, a bomb exploded in Milan's Piazza Fontana, killing 16 and wounding 87. At roughly the same time, two other bombs exploded in Rome, wounding 16.

Suspicion for the day's carnage initially fell on the far left, members of which insisted that right-wing groups, likely aided by elements of state intelligence, had planned the attack as a provocation. [7] What later came to be known as the "Piazza Fontana Massacre" was seen on the left as the inauguration of a "strategy of tension" pursued by the right in cooperation with the state. [8] Members of the Red Brigades attacked property rather than people until 1972; arson against factory managers' cars was particularly common, as were raids against the offices of right-wing organizations. [9] Beginning with the 1974 kidnapping of a Genoa magistrate, the Red Brigades expanded their attacks to include politicians and employees of the state. An April 1975 BR document outlining the organization's "Strategic Direction" identified Italy's long-dominant Christian Democratic party "the principal enemy." [10] The number of BR-directed attacks, including kidnappings and shootings, spiked between 1977 and 1979.

The organization's best-known attack of the period was the kidnapping and killing of Christian Democratic leader and former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. The Red Brigades' activities began to decline in 1980. Members began being arrested at higher rates, and those arrested began increasingly to cooperate with authorities, leading to the capture of more members. The group split numerous times over the period. The Red Brigades ceased to exist as a unified organization around 1981. Its core successor, the Red Brigades Fighting Communist Party (BR-PCC) continued to stage high-profile attacks throughout the decade. The Red Brigades' original leaders, many of them in jail, continued to guide the BR-PCC until formally declaring the armed struggle finished in 1988. [11] Attacks have been carried out in Italy under the name "Red Brigades" as late as 2002, though the attackers are likely not formally connected to the original organization. [12] Leadership Antonio Savasta (Unknown to 1982): Savasta was the leader of the Venice branch of the Red Brigades. He was arrested in 1982.

[13] Margherita Cagol (1970 to 1975): One of the founders of the Red Brigades, Cagol was Curcio's wife. She was killed in a shootout with police in June 1975. [14] Mario Moretti (1970 to 1981): Moretti was a founding member of the Red Brigades and confessed to having personally fired the shots that killed Christian Democratic Leader Aldo Moro. He was arrested in 1981 and freed in 1998. [15] Renato Curcio (1970 to 1984): Police arrested Curcio, along with co-founder Franceschini, with the help of an informant in September 1974. Curcio remained in prison for about four months until a BR squad directed by his wife and co-founder Margherita Cagol freed him and several others from prison in February 1975.

Following his release, Curcio was among the authors of an April 1975 document outlining the BR's "Strategic Direction" and identifying Italy's long-dominant Christian Democratic party "the principal enemy" and "the political and organizational center of reaction and terrorism." Curcio was recaptured in Milan in January 1976. He is believed to have continued to guide the organization from prison. [16] Alberto Franceschini (1970 to 1984): Franceschini was arrested along with Curcio in 1974. He is believed to have continued to guide the organization from prison. Ideology & Goals Communist revolutionary Marxist The Red Brigades sought to seize political power in Italy with a strategy combining elements of the Maoist cultural revolution in China and the Leninist Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be achieved in three phases; first, a period of "armed propaganda," followed by an attack on the "heart of the state," followed by a state of "generalized civil war" which would end with the overthrow of the state.

[17] Size Estimates 1970: 50 (Terrorism and Security : the Italian Experience.) [18] 1979: 1,000 "militants" and "some 2,000 external support (Terrorism and Security: The Italian Experience.) [19] 1983: 100 "militants" and "200 external supporters." (Terrorism and Security: the Italian Experience.) [20] Designated/Listed N/A. [21] Resources The Red Brigades got some revenue from kidnappings for ransom and from theft, which is also how they often acquired weapons. In absorbing smaller militant groups, the Red Brigades also took on their material assets, including those of the Gruppi di Azione Partigiana (GAP), which was financed by millionaire publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli until his death in 1972. [22] The group Soccorso Rosso (Red Aid) provided free legal services to left-wing operatives.

By October 31, 1982, Italian police had discovered and dismantled some 200 bases belonging to the BR. [23] External Influences The Red Brigades were influenced in their ideology and methods by leftist and militant movements all over the world. As elements of the Italian left moved toward a strategy of political violence in 1967 and 1968, Uruguay's Tupamaros provided a model of urban guerilla warfare at the same time that Palestinian nationalist terrorism became more prominent in the wake of the Six-Day war of 1967. [24] Philosophically, the BR borrowed from Lenin and Mao. More formally, members of the Red Brigades had contact with other Western European militant movements extant in the 1970s, especially Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF), whose 1977 kidnapping of business leader Hans Schleyer was the model for the Aldo Moro kidnapping a year later. [25] The BR are also believed to have had some connection with France's Actione Direct (AD) and have allegedly provided training for them.

[26] Former Red Brigades members have told authorities that the BR acquired weapons from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), with Libya acting as intermediary, beginning in 1978 or before. [27] BR founders Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol visited Cuba. [28] There is disputed evidence that the Red Brigades may have received funding from "Eastern bloc" communist countries including Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. [29] One former brigadier has denied these contacts, saying "The RB was formally prohibited from having contact, making liaison, or receiving assistance from the Eastern Bloc." [30] A training camp outside of Benghazi, Libya was allegedly used by Italian terrorists. Former members of the Red Brigades have denied press accounts of training abroad, however, saying that the BR instead used abandoned mines in Italy's mountains as training sites. [31] Geographical Locations Italian terrorist organizations of both the left and right were active primarily in the northwest and center of Italy. Left-wing groups concentrated on Milan, Turin, and Rome, whereas the militant right was most active in Milan and Rome.

The BR was the only one of these groups with a strong presence in Genoa. [32] The merger with NAP gave the Red Brigades a foothold in Naples and elsewhere in the more-agrarian south, but the Red Brigades had difficulty sustaining formal "columns" there, particularly after NAP dissolved. [33] Though the BR had its strongest presence in the cities listed above, the organization was active in at least 16 of Italy's 20 regions over its lifespan. [34] Targets & Tactics The Red Brigades typically attacked factories and the offices of right-wing targets such as political parties or certain trade unions. In its first few years such attacks were only against property and most often took the form of office raids and car arson.

Early Red Brigades communiqués describe such attacks as punishments for specific "anti-worker" actions, such as the firing of a coworker: "For every comrade they hit, one of them must pay," or, more generally, "for every eye, two eyes; for every tooth, an entire face." Thus, when in late 1970 "first the bosses, then the unions" of Milan's Pirelli plant fired a 50-year-old mechanic, "one of them, precisely the 'first on the list' (as suggested by many of the factory workers), found his car destroyed." [35] The Red Brigades' 1971 "self-interview" describes such methods as a form of "armed propaganda," which served both to recruit new members and to demonstrate "the conniving between power groups and/or apparently separate institutions." [36] The Red Brigades claimed its first attack against an individual on March 3, 1972, with the kidnapping of a Sit-Siemens plant manager. They released him the same day.

After 1972, the Red Brigades carried out targeted killings and kidnappings of factory managers, magistrates, and political figures, particularly members of the Christian Democratic party. The BR was one of few left-wing terrorist groups to engage in kidnappings, and conducted by far the most of any left-wing terrorist group, 18 of 24 attributed to the entire terrorist left. [37] Most of the BR's kidnappings were political, whereas other Italian leftist terrorist groups typically kidnapped to raise funds through ransom. [38] The BR adopted the practice of mass leg-shootings, also called "kneecapping," in 1980, months after another leftist group, Front Line (PL), pioneered the tactic. [39] The Red Brigades did not carry out mass-casualty explosive attacks. There were four such attacks in Italy between 1969 and 1980, all attributed to right-wing terrorists. [40] Political Activities The Red Brigades abandoned overt political activity after a wave of arrests in 1972.

[41] Major Attacks April 18, 1974: Kidnapping of Genoa Assistant State Attorney Mario Sossi. Sossi was the sixth person, and the first state employee, kidnapped by the Red Brigades. In its claim of responsibility, the BR called the kidnapping an attack "on the heart of the state." The group released him on May 23 in exchange for a court order, later blocked, to release eight BR-affiliated prisoners. (). [42] June 17, 1974: The BR killed two members of the right-wing party Italian Social Movement (MSI). (2 killed). [43] November 16, 1977: BR operatives shot Carlo Casalegno, deputy editor of La Stampa newspaper, on a street in Turin in broad daylight. Casalegno died of his wounds on November 29. (1 killed). [44] March 16, 1978: The BR kidnapped Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democratic party and a former prime minister. In the attack, members of the Red Brigades killed five of Moro's bodyguards.

On April 15, a BR communiqué announced that a "People's Tribunal" (Tribunale del Popolo) had tried Moro and had condemned him to death for his role in the "counter-revolutionary function of the [Christian Democrats]." Until May, however, BR communiqués offered to exchange Moro for 13 imprisoned BR members, including founders Franceschini and Curcio. The Italian government refused. Police found Moro's body in a car on May 9, 1978. (1 killed). [45] May 20, 1981: The Red Brigades kidnapped a chemical engineer in Mestre. It was the last attack claimed with the name "Red Brigades" as the organization split into factions. (0). [46] Relationships with Other Groups The Red Brigades was the largest left-wing terrorist organization in Italy, and most other left-wing Italian terrorist groups had some relationship to it as either rivals or allies. Other organizations later split off from the BR or were absorbed by it. The BR's most important ideological rival was Front Line (PL), the second-largest left-wing terrorist group in Italy.

Several of the PL's founders were dissident members of the BR who left the group because of its strict hierarchy and the centrality of the armed struggle to its political agenda. The PL viewed the hierarchy as counterproductive, and the armed struggle as merely a tactic in a larger political program. The Red Brigades may have begun to cooperate with the PL in the late 1970s as the smaller organization declined and began calling for a unified proletarian force. The BR's symbol, a five-pointed star, appeared on the PL's claim of responsibility for a 1979 attack on a Turin school. [47] The BR formed an alliance with Naples-based Armed Proletarian Nuclei (NAP) in 1976. The BR had had difficulty extending its reach into agrarian southern Italy due to its focus on the class struggle in factories, which were concentrated in the industrial north. [48] Most of NAP's leadership was arrested shortly after that, and the BR absorbed the remainder of the group's assets and members.

[49] The BR absorbed several other smaller groups as well, including Partisan Action Groups (GAP), which merged with the Red Brigades in 1970 after itself absorbing the October XXII Circle. [50] The BR itself began to decline with the arrest of many of its leaders in the early 1980s. The group split; its main successors were the Red Brigades Walter Alasia Column (BR-WA), the Red Brigades Guerrila Party (BR-PG), and the Red Brigades Fighting Communist Party (BR-PCC). Community Relationships Leftist extraparliamentary organizations represented a recruitment pool and a source of logistical and public relations support for the BR, especially Workers' Autonomy (Autonomia Operaia, AUTOP) and Workers' Power (Potere Operaiao, POTOP or PO). [51] This latter group formally dissolved in 1973, though prosecutors investigating the case argued that the "dissolution" was a cover for members' deciding to take up arms with the Red Brigades and others. [52] References ^ Barbato, Tullio. Il Terrorismo In Italia Negli Anni Settanta : Cronaca E Documentazione.

Milano: Bibliografica, 1980. p. 52 ^ Brigaterosse.org. "Breve storia delle Brigate Rosse (1970-1987), Parte III." Last updated March 15, 2007. Retrieved April 15, 2012, from . ^ Della Porta, Donatella. Il Terrorismo Di Sinistra. Bologna: Il mulino, 1990. p. 92. ^ Brigate Rosse, "Prima intervista a se stessi," 1971. Available: ^ Barbato, Tullio. Il Terrorismo In Italia Negli Anni Settanta : Cronaca E Documentazione. Milano: Bibliografica, 1980. Aldo Moro - Politics biography Aldo Moro Last modified : 2010-11-16 Aldo Moro was a prominent leader of Italy's Christian Democratic Party.

He was a major proponent of the "Centro-Sinistra"—the center-left government coalitions in the 1960s—and in the early 1970s of the compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Communists. In 1978 he was kidnapped and then murdered by the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organization opposed to his "historic compromise" policies. Aldo Moro was born in Maglie (in the southeastern province of Lecce) on September 23, 1916. His parents were both educators. His father was an inspector for the ministry of public instruction, and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Moro attended school in Taranto. His obesity often made him a target of teasing by his school mates, but he studied hard and ranked at the top of his class. Moro's background was strongly Catholic, and he was active in church-sponsored youth groups both in the Gioventi Cattolica Italiana at the high school and in the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI) at the University of Bari. At the university he studied law and was president of the local Catholic student chapter.

In 1939 he transferred to Rome. There he became the national president of FUCI and followed Pope Pius XII's line on behalf of peace in Europe and neutrality in Italy for World War II. In 1942 he resigned his position after being drafted for military service. In 1945 Moro, then a professor of law at the University of Bari, was elected to the Constituent Assembly on the Christian Democratic list and began a distinguished political career. He was the youngest of the 18 members of the coordination committee that drew up the Italian republic's constitution. He was subsequently elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1948 and was appointed by Alcide De Gasperi to serve as undersecretary to the foreign minister, a post he retained until 1950. In 1954 Moro accepted his first cabinet post, minister of justice, under Antonio Segni. As minister of justice Moro was in charge of all prisons in Italy. He enacted a series of sweeping reforms after inspecting every prison in the country and talking with thousands of prisoners, something no predecessor had done in more than 100 years.

Subsequently he served as minister of public instruction in the government of Adone Zoli before becoming secretary of the Christian Democrats in 1959. Although the Christian Democrats were badly divided and in danger of splitting, Moro managed to rally the party around him. He was always a staunch anti-Communist and told the Christian Democrats' seventh congress in October 1959 that for Christian Democracy, "the first duty is to resist Communism in every sector: human, moral, political and social." Nevertheless, he was uneasy that his party, in order to form a governing coalition, was so heavily dependent on right wing parties with pro-Fascist sympathies. His goal was to form coalitions that were both anti-Communist and anti-Fascist. After a period of initial reluctance, he began talks with the Socialists of Pietro Nenni, who claimed to have broken with the Communists. The negotiations resulted in the parliamentary coalition of the Center-Left, the "apertura a sinistra" (opening to the left). Eventually this led to the formation of Moro's first government in 1963.

He headed three governments between 1963 and June 1968 and two more in the mid-1970s. After a series of electoral gains by the Italian Communist Party in the early 1970s, Moro began to urge Christian Democrats toward the "Compromesso Storico" or "Historic Compromise." According to this informal agreement, which lasted from 1976 to 1979, the Communists refrained from voting against the Christian Democrats in return for an informal voice in governmental policy. As a politician Moro was not a brilliant speaker, but he was able to bring political antagonists together. He built a reputation as a master of ambiguous political formulas, subtle maneuvers, and compromises between seemingly irreconcilable positions. In describing a deal between the Christian Democrats and left-wing groups in a shaky government coalition, he spoke of "parallel convergencies." The phrase, a contradiction in terms, became famous as an example of the Moro style of politics. Moro was married and the father of three daughters and a son. He lived quietly with his family in a modest apartment in Rome.

In March 1978 Moro became the most sensational victim of the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organization bitterly opposed to Moro's "historic compromise." In a daring maneuver outside his home in Rome the kidnappers killed Moro's five police guards and abducted him. In letters to the government, newspapers, and Moro's family the kidnappers demanded the release from jail of 13 terrorist leaders awaiting trial or sentencing. The government faced a terrible dilemma. To give in to the terrorists would expose politicians to future kidnappings. To give in would also admit that the life of a political leader was worth saving, but not the lives of policemen, judges, journalists, or businessmen—all past victims of terrorist attacks. The government and the political parties rejected the kidnappers' demands. After a fruitless 54-day search by security forces, Moro's body was found in May in the trunk of a car in the center of Rome. Symbolically, the car was parked half way between the national headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist parties. Frank J.

Coppa, editor, "Moro," in Dictionary of Modern Italian History (1985), and Corrado Pizzinelli's, Moro (Milan, 1969) provide additional information on Moro. View the full website biography of Aldo Moro . Aldo Moro facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Aldo Moro COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Aldo Moro Aldo Moro (1916-1978) was a prominent leader of Italy's Christian Democratic Party. He was a major proponent of the "Centro-Sinistra"—the center-left government coalitions in the 1960s—and in the early 1970s of the compromise between the Christian Democrats and the Communists. In 1978 he was kidnapped and then murdered by the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organization opposed to his "historic compromise" policies. Aldo Moro was born in Maglie (in the southeastern province of Lecce) on September 23, 1916. His parents were both educators.

His father was an inspector for the ministry of public instruction, and his mother was an elementary school teacher. Moro attended school in Taranto. His obesity often made him a target of teasing by his school mates, but he studied hard and ranked at the top of his class. Moro's background was strongly Catholic, and he was active in church-sponsored youth groups both in the Gioventù Cattolica Italiana at the high school and in the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI) at the University of Bari. At the university he studied law and was president of the local Catholic student chapter. In 1939 he transferred to Rome. There he became the national president of FUCI and followed Pope Pius XII's line on behalf of peace in Europe and neutrality in Italy for World War II. In 1942 he resigned his position after being drafted for military service. In 1945 Moro, then a professor of law at the University of Bari, was elected to the Constituent Assembly on the Christian Democratic list and began a distinguished political career. He was the youngest of the 18 members of the coordination committee that drew up the Italian republic's constitution.

He was subsequently elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1948 and was appointed by Alcide De Gasperi to serve as undersecretary to the foreign minister, a post he retained until 1950. In 1954 Moro accepted his first cabinet post, minister of justice, under Antonio Segni. As minister of justice Moro was in charge of all prisons in Italy. He enacted a series of sweeping reforms after inspecting every prison in the country and talking with thousands of prisoners, something no predecessor had done in more than 100 years. Subsequently he served as minister of public instruction in the government of Adone Zoli before becoming secretary of the Christian Democrats in 1959. Although the Christian Democrats were badly divided and in danger of splitting, Moro managed to rally the party around him.

He was always a staunch anti-Communist and told the Christian Democrats' seventh congress in October 1959 that for Christian Democracy, "the first duty is to resist Communism in every sector: human, moral, political and social." Nevertheless, he was uneasy that his party, in order to form a governing coalition, was so heavily dependent on right wing parties with pro-Fascist sympathies. His goal was to form coalitions that were both anti-Communist and anti-Fascist. After a period of initial reluctance, he began talks with the Socialists of Pietro Nenni, who claimed to have broken with the Communists. The negotiations resulted in the parliamentary coalition of the Center-Left, the "apertura a sinistra" (opening to the left). Eventually this led to the formation of Moro's first government in 1963. He headed three governments between 1963 and June 1968 and two more in the mid-1970s.

After a series of electoral gains by the Italian Communist Party in the early 1970s, Moro began to urge Christian Democrats toward the "Compromesso Storico" or "Historic Compromise." According to this informal agreement, which lasted from 1976 to 1979, the Communists refrained from voting against the Christian Democrats in return for an informal voice in governmental policy. As a politician Moro was not a brilliant speaker, but he was able to bring political antagonists together. He built a reputation as a master of ambiguous political formulas, subtle maneuvers, and compromises between seemingly irreconcilable positions. In describing a deal between the Christian Democrats and left-wing groups in a shaky government coalition, he spoke of "parallel convergencies." The phrase, a contradiction in terms, became famous as an example of the Moro style of politics. Moro was married and the father of three daughters and a son. He lived quietly with his family in a modest apartment in Rome.

In March 1978 Moro became the most sensational victim of the Red Brigades, a left-wing terrorist organization bitterly opposed to Moro's "historic compromise." In a daring maneuver outside his home in Rome the kidnappers killed Moro's five police guards and abducted him. In letters to the government, newspapers, and Moro's family the kidnappers demanded the release from jail of 13 terrorist leaders awaiting trial or sentencing. The government faced a terrible dilemma. To give in to the terrorists would expose politicians to future kidnappings. To give in would also admit that the life of a political leader was worth saving, but not the lives of policemen, judges, journalists, or businessmen—all past victims of terrorist attacks. The government and the political parties rejected the kidnappers' demands. After a fruitless 54-day search by security forces, Moro's body was found in May in the trunk of a car in the center of Rome. Symbolically, the car was parked half way between the national headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist parties. Further Reading Frank J.

Coppa, editor, "Moro," in Dictionary of Modern Italian History (1985), and Corrado Pizzinelli's, Moro (Milan, 1969) provide additional information on Moro. □ Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Aldo Moro (äl´dō mô´rō), 1916–78, Italian political leader. A lawyer, he entered national politics in 1946, when he was elected to the constituent assembly as a member of the Christian Democratic party. As minister of justice (1955–57), he worked to reform the prison system, strengthening regulations forbidding corporal punishment and improving food, hygiene, and sanitary conditions. He was political secretary of the Christian Democratic party from 1959 to 1963. In Dec., 1963, he became prime minister, a post he held until 1968. He later served as minister of foreign affairs.

During the 1970s, he was the leader of the effort to achieve a rapprochement with the Communist party. Moro was kidnapped and assassinated by the terrorist Red Brigades. See R. Drake, The Aldo Moro Murder Case (1996). Cite this article

Question: Which terrorist gang murdered Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro
Answer: The Red Brigade