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Red Terror Grips Italy Again

March 21, 2002

Italians are once again living in fear of a terror organisation that sent shock waves around the country in the 1970’s. A new generation of "Red Brigades" guerrillas has "executed" a top government advisor.

https://p.dw.com/p/21Bt
"You do not terrorize us" - a demonstration against terror in BolognaImage: AP

Marco Biagi was gunned down on his way home on Tuesday night. He was shot in the neck in front of his door after cycling home from Bologna train station.

He had received a series of telephone threats after a police escort was deemed unnecessary and suspended last year. "They have abandoned you," one caller told him.

Biagi (photo) was a top government advisor. And his murder was politically motivated.

Marco Biagi
A recent but undated file photo of Marco Biagi, a consultant to Italy's labor minister, who was shot dead in Bologna, late Tuesday, March 19, 2002. Biagi, a professor and assistant to Labor Minister Roberto Maroni, was killed as he left his home in Bologna. There were no immediate claims of responsibility. (AP Photo/Paolo Ferrari)Image: AP

The Red Brigades posted a message on the internet claiming responsibility for the killing.

"An armed nucleus of our organisation executed Marco Biagi" the message reads, and goes on to accuse the Labour Ministry adviser of "exploiting" workers with the labour reforms he had co-authored.

Their "struggle" is against capitalism, a broad remit, making the entire establishment its enemy. And murder is the means by which the Red Brigades hope to achieve politically motivated goals.

They are following in the footsteps of the mob that murdered politicians, businessmen and policemen in the late 1970s and 1980s.

The name Also Moro stands for the organisation’s most notorious outrage. Red Brigades kidnapped and then killed the former Italian prime minister in 1978 in an attempt to bring down the Italian state. In effect it strengthened it by alienating even their sympathisers.

The guerrilla movement was believed to have been wiped out. But Biagi was murdered with the same pistol that Red Brigades had used to kill another government aide in 1999.

The internet document was signed by the Red Brigades for the construction of a Combatant Communist Party (BR-PCC), which police believe is a new generation of the old group.

A police official in Bologna said: "The language and contents of the statement seem to prove its authenticity."

That is all the police presently has to go on. They hope that the killers may have been caught on film by a train station camera when Biagi’s train arrived in Bologna.

Biagi’s murder has raised fears of a resurgence of political violence by left-wing and right-wing extremists in Italy.

"Democracy is being blackmailed," La Repubblica newspaper said on Thursday.