A former member of the Italian Red Brigades, Leonardo Bertulazzi, was arrested in Buenos Aires on Thursday after the government of far-right leader Javier Milei revoked his refugee status, which he had obtained in 2004. Bertulazzi, 72, had been a fugitive since 1980 from Italian justice, which sentenced him in absentia to 27 years in prison for kidnapping, criminal association and the use of weapons of war. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has a good relationship with Milei, expressed her “deep gratitude” to the Argentine authorities.
In the seventies, Bertulazzi was known by the alias of Stefano and worked in the Genoese division of the Red Brigades, the left-wing terrorist group. According to the Italian courts, Bertulazzi participated in the kidnapping of the naval engineer Piero Costa in January 1977. With the million-dollar ransom paid by his family, which enabled his release after 81 days, it is presumed that the Red Brigades financed various terrorist activities. Among them, the purchase of the apartment in Rome where, in 1978, the former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was held captive after being kidnapped, and was eventually assassinated.
Bertulazzi was arrested by agents of the Argentine Federal Police, with the collaboration of the Italian Police Attaché. The local Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, praised the “deep intelligence work” prior to the arrest: the detainee was found at his home, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Monserrat. “The years of impunity for this dangerous criminal are over. In this Argentina led by President Milei, whoever does things, pays for them,” was the official’s message on her social networks. From Italy, in addition to Meloni, the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, spoke out. He stressed that the arrest was “the result of the constant commitment to bring dangerous fugitives to justice.”
Thursday’s arrest was Bertulazzi’s second in Buenos Aires. The first had occurred in November 2002. He had been in Argentina for six months at the time, having entered with an older brother’s document from Chile, through a border crossing in Patagonia. He had just traveled across Latin America on a motorcycle, from El Salvador, where he had lived for a decade.
At that time, Bertulazzi requested political asylum, arguing that he had “never committed a crime against peace, a war crime or against humanity, nor had he ever committed any atrocity.” He also claimed that the crimes he was accused of in Italy had expired and that special laws had been applied to convict him. His request was supported by human rights organizations and a hundred academics from different countries. He was granted asylum in 2004, but he had already been released before then, in mid-2003, when the local courts did not recognize the conviction handed down in Italy because Bertulazzi, having been tried in absentia, had not been able to exercise his right to a defense.
Milei’s government has now decided to remove his refugee status and Bertulazzi has been arrested again. The extradition process will be opened, in response to the Italian request, and it remains to be seen whether this time the Argentine justice system will recognise the conviction in absentia.
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