Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades)

An Italian far-left terrorist group that killed a former prime minister and achieved the opposite of everything it wanted. The Red Brigades were founded around 1970 by student and factory activists who concluded that Italy's post-war order was a class dictatorship and that armed struggle would provoke a revolution. They began with sabotage and kneecapping - shooting managers and journalists in the legs - and escalated to kidnapping and murder. Their defining act was the abduction of Aldo Moro in March 1978: five bodyguards were killed in the ambush, and Moro, the Christian Democrat leader then constructing the historic compromise that would have brought the Communist Party into government, was held for 55 days while both the government and the Communists refused to negotiate. He wrote letters begging for a prisoner exchange. His body was left in a car boot in central Rome in May. The killing destroyed the political project he embodied and turned public opinion decisively against the group. Italy's years of lead saw hundreds killed by left and right-wing violence, with the deadliest single attack, the Bologna station bombing of 1980, carried out by neo-fascists. The state responded with special legislation and reduced sentences for informers, which broke the organisation from inside. Most leaders were arrested by the mid-1980s. A residual faction carried out killings in 1999 and 2002. The group never had significant popular support. The group was active from 1970 to the late 1980s, with a residual faction later. It operated mainly in Milan, Turin, Genoa and Rome. Its emblem was a five-pointed star. Around 75 people were killed in actions attributed to it.

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