Word: brigatisti
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...most vehement opponents of any bargain with the kidnapers were still the Communists. Stung by the Brigatisti's repeated claims to be fighting for "Communism," the party was determined to put as much distance as possible between itself and the ultra-leftist "criminals." Arguing that a surrender to the terrorists would lead to more violence and civil war, Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer told a party youth congress in Florence: "We must be inflexible not because of a cold and abstract 'reason of state,' but because, if we yield, the democratic institutions would enter into a suicidal logic...
...Brigatisti, however, did leave a new trail of blood with two hit-and-run attacks. In the first, Girolamo Mechelli, 54, a Christian Democratic politician, was jumped by two gunmen who pumped five bullets into his legs. In Turin, two men and a woman shot Sergio Palmieri, 41, a Fiat labor relations official, also in the legs, as he left for work. At week's end these terrorists were still at large. Authorities, however, issued arrest warrants for six men and three women who were charged with Moro's abduction and the killing of his five bodyguards...
Renato Curcio, 36, the handsome, bearded convict who is thought to have founded the organization, exemplifies the movement and its methods. Curcio, now on trial in Turin with 48 other brigatisti,* established a leftist splinter group at the University of Trento in 1967. Members immersed themselves in Marx, Mao and Che Guevara...
...moved to Milan, where they swiftly became zealots of armed struggle. The Red Brigades were set up in November 1970 as "an armed proletariat vanguard to be the revolutionary power of the exploited classes." The Communists, in the organization's view, had sold out; the aim of the brigatisti, much like that of 19th century anarchists, was to purify society by overthrowing all existing institutions. But the Red Brigades seem to have no coherent vision of what would replace them...
Nothing demonstrates the Red Brigades' methods more chillingly than the campaign of terror that members have conducted since the Turin trial began in May 1976. That first trial was postponed when a defendant announced that brigatisti were responsible for the assassination of Genoa's chief public prosecutor and two assistants just the day before. Last April, as the trial was to resume, brigatisti fatally shot Fulvio Croce, 76, president of the Turin Bar Association, whose appointment as Curcio's defense counsel made him a "collaborationist of the regime." Jurors suddenly found excuses not to serve, and dozens...