Word: moro
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...missive, obviously designed to upstage the parliamentary debate, once again demonstrated the terrorists' skill at holding the country hostage to their game of psychological suspense. Said one police official grudgingly: "The Red Brigades' sense of stage direction is perfect." But if the underlying goal of Moro's ultra-leftist kidnapers was to sabotage Italy's democratic process and its tenuous political balance, they had failed, at least so far. The effect of the new challenge was a closing of ranks behind the government's position...
...letter to Zaccagnini, like the one sent the week before to Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga, was handwritten. In his earlier message Moro wrote that he feared he would be forced to disclose official secrets harmful to the government. This time he plaintively accused his colleagues of forsaking him. Pleading for "realism," he argued that "the only possible positive solution" was "the liberation of prisoners on both sides. Time is running out fast." He concluded: "In truth, I feel somewhat abandoned...
...before, the letter failed to make any specific demands on behalf of Moro's kidnapers. But there was some hope that a ransom deal that did not involve the Christian Democratic Party or the government might be worked out privately. Such a move would have a precedent. When the son of former Socialist Party Leader Francesco de Martino was kidnaped in Naples last year, his release was secured with a reported ransom of $880,000, raised by wealthy party backers and a subscription among the membership. The main difference is that the De Martino kidnaping turned...
Meanwhile Pope Paul VI, a longtime friend of Moro's, made a direct personal appeal for his release. But in his usual Sunday-noon blessing to the crowd in St. Peter's Square, the Pope denied that he had "any particular indications" about what he called this "painful affair," thereby refuting rumors that Vatican officials had been in secret contact with the kidnapers. Pleaded His Holiness: "To the unknown authors of the terrifying plot, we address a pressing appeal to implore them to give the prisoner his liberty...
There is no excuse for the kind of flippant analysis which accompanied the announcement in What Is To Be Done? of the April 11 speech by Giorgio Napolitano. The gratuitous remark that from some points of view, the terrorists of the Brigate Rosse (Moro's kidnappers) are characterized as freedom fighters ignores the unanimous condemnation of such acts by the Italian democratic left. The implication that the Italian Communist Party may actually be sympathetic to such acts of violence is not only uninformed but offensive; that the Communists welcome violence as an occasion for insincere disclaimers to assuage the fears...