Posted on 03/03/2003 7:04:23 AM PST by Indy Pendance
ROME (AP) -- Italian anti-terrorism experts scrambled Monday to determine the possible target of two suspected Red Brigades fugitives involved in a deadly shootout with police on a train, amid fears the far-left terrorist group was preparing to strike again.
The shootout Sunday near Arezzo left a policeman dead and another wounded. A member of the group that terrorized Italy in the '70s and '80s was killed and his companion captured. The group had resumed killings a few years ago.
Authorities were holding Nadia Desdemona Lioce, 43, who was wanted for the 1999 slaying in Rome of Massimo D'Antona, an adviser to the labor ministry.
When led away in handcuffs Sunday from the tiny train station where the train had stopped, Lioce shouted, "Yes, it's me, Nadia Desdemona Lioce. I declare myself a political prisoner."
With Lioce's refusal to make any further comments, and the death her companion, Mario Galesi, 37, after surgery for his wounds in the shootout, investigators were concentrating on the contents of a bag the couple carried on the train.
Inside, state TV reported, was a tiny video camera tucked into a cigarette pack, floppy disks, a road map of central Italy, notebook pages with names and phone numbers and a palm-held computer.
Italian news reports also said the bag contained articles from Il Sole 24 Ore, a financial daily, talking about the labor reform guidelines drawn up by Mario Biagi, a government consultant who was gunned down in Bologna last year.
Police guarded the home in Arezzo of an undersecretary in the labor ministry, Grazia Sestini, from Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, who lives in Arezzo. She told state radio she doubted she was the target, because she works on matters dealing with the disabled and not on the controversial labor reforms that the center-right government has been crafting.
D'Antona was advising the previous center-left government while Biagi worked with Berlusconi's government on reforms, which include making it easier to fire workers.
Enzo Bianco, the head of the Italian Parliament's oversight committee on secret services, expressed concern that the Red Brigades and an associated terrorist group, the Fighting Communist Party, might be targeting military figures in view of a possible war in Iraq, a conflict widely opposed by the Italian public.
Although most attention was being put on a possible attack, the possibility that the couple were planning a robbery for funds was also raised.
Galesi was arrested in 1997 for robbing a post office in Rome, a crime investigators said was planned to bankroll the Red Brigades, and a year later disappeared while on a leave from prison.
Galesi and Lioce were described as fugitive Red Brigades members in a report on wanted terrorists delivered on Jan. 27 to the Chamber of Deputies by Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.
The killing of D'Antona was the first Red Brigades attack in 11 years.
The shootout Sunday began after two policemen on the train asked the couple for their identity documents. Under laws to combat the bombings, shootings and kidnappings of the 1970s and 1980s when terrorists from the extreme right and left of the political spectrum kept the country gripped in fear, police can stop citizens on the street or traveling to examine their identity papers.
Although the Interior Ministry described the identity checks on the train as part of aroutine control, it is rare to see police aboard trains do random identity checks.
It was not clear if the police on the train had become suspicious or if perhaps there had been a tip or if the couple had been tailed.
The Red Brigades in the '70s and '80s targeted politicians, businessmen and military officials. Among their most notorious strikes with the 1978 kidnapping and slaying of former Christian Democrat Premier Aldo Moro, and the kidnapping of U.S. Brig. Gen. James Dozier, who was freed in a police raid.
Uh no. The AP is lying again in order to diminish left wing terror. Its was purely left-wingers who did the terrorism in the 70's and 80's in Italy (Greece and Germany as well). This is a lame attempt to say "both sides are guilty" when in fact botyh sides are not.
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RED BRIGADES: POLICEMAN BRUNO FORTUNATO STABLE IN HOSPITAL
Agenzia Giornalistica Italia (English Version), Italy - 2 hours ago
(AGI) - Arezzo, Italy, March 3 - Policeman Bruno Fortunato, 45, from
Terontola, is said to be stable. Fortunato was wounded by a ...
Italy scrambles to determine the target of suspected terrorists ...
San Francisco Chronicle, CA - 12 minutes ago
Italian anti-terrorism experts scrambled Monday to determine the possible target
of two suspected Red Brigades fugitives involved in a deadly shootout with ...
Investigators in Italy investigate shootout involving suspected ...
WPMI, AL - 18 minutes ago
... Rome-AP -- Anti-terrorism experts in Italy are trying to determine the possible target
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Italian policeman killed in train shootout with suspected ... - WPMI
World / Nation Briefs
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A wanted Red Brigades terrorist whose false identity papers were being checked
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Rome-AP -- Anti-terrorism experts in Italy are trying to determine the possible target
of two Red Brigades members involved in a shootout on a train yesterday. ...
COMMUNICATIONS MINISTER GASPARRI CALLS FOR UNITED FIGHT
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... Gasparri had been asked his opinion regarding concern over new Red Brigades
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Google:
Red Brigades (BR)
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A Palm computer, combined with a Magellan, makes a very useful locating device. One of my sons has this setup to map animal tracks in the woods. It's essentially a SatNav system which can include detailed maps of the area in question, enabling you to locate yourself exactly on the map.
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