Word: curcio
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Renato Curcio, 37, darkly bearded founder-leader of the ultraleftist Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), and four confederates were on trial for resisting arrest and illegal arms possession. But also on trial was the Italian government's ability to maintain civil order-or to conduct a trial at all. Although Curcio's Red Brigades have fewer than 1,000 hardcore activists and supporters, their terrorism has resulted in eight deaths and two dozen wounded in connection with the prosecutions. As Curcio vowed on opening day: "The trial is an act of war to which we will reply with acts...
Once an honor student in sociology at the University of Trento, Curcio refused his degree as a symbolic act of defiance in 1969. He moved to Milan and began organizing small revolutionary groups in the city's major factories, then moved on to kidnaping factory executives and shooting government officials. Police captured Curcio in late 1974, but his wife, Margherita Cagol, led a commando raid against the lightly guarded prison and rescued him. Four months later, police closed in on Curcio's wife at a farm where she and some confederates were holding a kidnaped wine merchant...
...though it held him prisoner, the government found it difficult to bring him to trial. In Turin, Curcio and 52 others faced charges of armed insurrection (maximum penalty: life imprisonment). The Red Brigades responded by assassinating a prominent jurist; the trial was thereupon postponed. When the distinguished septuagenarian president of the Turin bar asked to aid in Curcio's defense, he was shot to death near his office. Curcio, who demanded the right to conduct his own defense, declared that the lawyer was a "collaborationist of the regime" and had been "executed." As the Turin trial was rescheduled...