Published 2024-08-29 23.40
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full screen Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thanks Argentina after a member of the former terrorist movement Red Brigades was arrested. Archive image. Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP/TT
A leading member of the former Italian terrorist movement the Red Brigades has been arrested in Argentina. Leonardo Bertaluzzi was detained after Argentine authorities stripped him of the asylum status he had had in the country since 2004. The decision was made after the Italian government presented a new request for Bertaluzzi to be handed over to Italy.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, expressed “deep gratitude” after news that Bertaluzzi – now in his 70s – had been arrested.
Bertaluzzi was part of the armed, Marxist-Leninist group Red Brigades – Brigate rosse – which carried out several terrorist attacks, kidnappings and political acts mainly in the 1970s and into the late 1980s. He was a member of the so-called March 28 cell that kidnapped a prominent shipowner. Bertaluzzi has previously been sentenced to 27 years in prison in his absence, he fled to Argentina where he was arrested in 2002, but then released.
The Red Brigades carried out several targeted acts where judges, politicians, journalists and business leaders were kidnapped and in some cases murdered.