The Red Brigades’ terror was undermined by a combination of intensified police crackdowns and internal strife.
When one thinks of international terrorism in the twenty-first century, chances are one generally thinks of Islamist terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, and so forth. But those of us who are old enough to remember the Cold War will recall that that particular era produced its fair share of Western European terrorists who were motivated by Marxist ideology. Among these were the West German Red Army Faction (aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, and Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre in Spain, and our current subject at hand, the Italian Red Brigades.
The Italian Red Brigades’ Beginnings
The Red Brigades, aka the Combatant Communist Party, was founded in November 1970 by Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol. As has been true with many terrorist groups throughout history, many of its early members were disillusioned radical students. Their agenda was to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle and to force Italy’s removal from NATO. During Italy’s infamous “Years of Lead” in the 1970s and 1980s, the Red Brigades enacted their radical agenda via arson, assassination, bombings, and kidnappings. They established themselves as the most powerful, largest, and longest-lived post-World War II leftist terror group in Western Europe, and, as the Rise to Peace website, puts it, “the most important terrorist group in all Italian history.”
A Red Brigades’ Victory: The Kidnapping and Murder of Aldo Moro
The Red Brigades murdered nearly fifty people between 1974 and 1988, but their most famous victim—and the terror group’s most infamous act—was the kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. (Ironically, Moro’s was a member of the center-left of the Christian Democracy party, but evidently center-left wasn’t leftist enough for the Red Brigades.)
On March 16 of that year, as described by Mohammed Aref Al-Adhamat of the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition:
“[A] Fiat car passed by with a sixty-year-old man sitting in the back seat, protected by a guard sitting in the front seat, and behind it was a guard car. Suddenly, another car with a diplomatic license plate blocked the road, forcing the two cars to stop, followed by two cars from which five men and a woman jumped and opened fire on the car driver, the guard and three other security men in the other car. The attackers quickly pulled the man [Moro, that is] they wanted out of the car, pushed him into their car, and fled within three minutes.”
The terrorists held Moro—who had been en route to a legislative meeting at the time of his abduction—hostage for 54 days whilst they demanded the release of thirteen of their imprisoned comrades. The Italian government refused to negotiate, and on May 9 of that year, Signore Moro’s corpse was found dumped in a car.
However, this temporary victory actually ended up hurting the Red Brigades politically in the long run, as the savagery of their murderous act cost them a lot of popular support.
A Red Brigades’ Defeat: The Rescue of Gen. Dozier
Fortunately, the story of the Brigatte’s abduction of U.S. Army Brigadier General James Lee Dozier—NATO’s Deputy Chief of Staff at NATO’s Southern European land forces at the time—has a much happier ending. On December 17, 1981, four of the terrorists, masquerading as plumbers, broke into the General’s Verona apartment, abducted him, and left his wife chained. They held him for forty-two days in an apartment in Padua, but then on January 28, 1982, the Italian antiterrorist group Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS) pulled off a brilliant and daring rescue. As described in detail by antiterrorism expert Leroy Thompson (a former U.S. Air Force Combat Security Policeman during the Vietnam War) in his excellent 1986 book The Rescuers: The World’s Top Anti-Terrorist Units:
“Assaulting at just after 11:30 A.M. to take advantage of the bustle on the streets and the noise of a construction crew’s bulldozer nearby, ten NOCS men arrived in front of the apartment building in a moving van and were dressed in civilian clothes (though they were ballistic vests and balaclavas). One assault team member split off to seal a supermarket door near the apartment entrance so the innocent bystanders could not wander out, while the nine other men assaulted the apartment. One member of NOCS—a competitive weightlifter—took out the door quickly; another NOCS man efficiently took out a terrorist encountered in the hall with a karate blow to the forehead. As still another terrorist prepared to execute Gen. Dozier, a NOCS man felled him with a blow from the butt of his [Beretta] M12 [9mm submachine gun].”
This, along with the aforementioned fallout from the Moro murder, signaled the beginning of the end of the Red Brigades, as they were undermined by a combination of intensified police crackdowns as well as internal strife, and they basically faded into obscurity by 1990.
Red Brigades’ Weapon of Choice: the vz. 61 Škorpion Machine Pistol
The vz. 61 Škorpion .32 ACP (7.65mm, same caliber as James Bond’s Walther PPK) machine pistol was a Czech-made weapon that first entered into production in 1961. A highly compact (barrel length weapon of 4.5 inches with an overall length of 10.6 inches with the stock folded (20.4 inches with the stock extended) and boasting an 850 rounds per minute rate of fire, the gun was extremely popular with Warsaw Pact military forces and left-wing terrorist groups. The Red Brigades in particular were infamous for using the Škorpion to “kneecap” their victims.
I myself fired a Škorpion recently at a rental range. Of all the full-auto weapons I’ve fired, this was the easiest for keeping the majority of shots on target: I suppose that’s due in part to the closed-bolt operation (just like with the HK MP5) and the low recoil of the .32 caliber cartridge.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
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