Leonardo Bertulazzi, former leader of the Red Brigades, was arrested on Thursday, August 29 in Argentina, where he was living, after his refugee status was revoked by the Argentine government of Javier Milei, announced the Italian and Argentine authorities.
The septuagenarian, the subject of an international arrest warrant for murder, attack and kidnapping, belonged to the Genoese “28 March” section of the Red Brigades, which had kidnapped and held hostage a shipowner.
He was sentenced in 1987 to a cumulative sentence of twenty-seven years in prison for subversive association and membership in an armed gang. In 2022 he had already been arrested in Buenos Aires, before being released a few months later.
His arrest on Thursday at his home in Buenos Aires was the result of a “deep intelligence work” by the Argentine Ministry of Security, the Intelligence Directorate and a “Coordinated effort with Italian authorities”The Argentine ministry said in a press release. The Ministry of Justice and the services of the head of the government’s cabinet worked “withdraw the terrorist’s recognition as a political refugee”the ministry added.
“Linked to the logistics of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is supposedly politically linked to the ultra-liberal Argentine President Javier Milei, expressed in a statement her “Deep gratitude to the Argentine authorities”.
This arrest “It reflects Argentina’s commitment to the values of democracy and the rule of law, and illustrates to the world the firm decision not to live with unpunished murderers”For its part, the Argentine ministry estimated.
Founded in 1973 by Italian Renato Curcio and defending Marxist-Leninist ideology, the Red Brigades (BR) wounded or killed dozens of judges, politicians, journalists and industrialists during the 1970s.
According to the Argentine ministry, Leonardo Bertulazzi “He had been involved in the logistics of Aldo Moro’s kidnapping”the former head of the Italian government kidnapped in March 1978, found dead almost two months later in the trunk of a car in central Rome.
