Terrorism on Trial in Italy

The four men were herded into the dingy, second-floor courtroom of Milan's Palace of Justice--handcuffed in pairs and bound together by a dull iron chain. The lone woman defendant walked by herself under the guard of heavily armed carabinieri. Six jurors, headed by a middle-aged woman wearing a shiny new sash in the national colors of red, white and green, nervously took their oaths. Over the shouted objections of the defendants, the presiding magistrate appointed defense attorneys and the trial got under way.

Renato Curcio, 37, darkly bearded founder-leader of the ultraleftist Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), and four confederates were on trial for resisting arrest and illegal arms possession. But also on trial was the Italian government's ability to maintain civil order--or to conduct a trial at all. Although Curcio's Red Brigades have fewer than 1,000 hardcore activists and supporters, their terrorism has resulted in eight deaths and two dozen wounded in connection with the prosecutions. As Curcio vowed on opening day: "The trial is an act of war to which we will reply with acts of war."

Once an honor student in sociology at the University of Trento, Curcio refused his degree as a symbolic act of defiance in 1969. He moved to Milan and began organizing small revolutionary groups in the city's major factories, then moved on to kidnaping factory executives and shooting government officials. Police captured Curcio in late 1974, but his wife, Margherita Cagol, led a commando raid against the lightly guarded prison and rescued him. Four months later, police closed in on Curcio's wife at a farm where she and some confederates were holding a kidnaped wine merchant. In the fight, Margherita, 29, was shot dead. When the authorities finally trapped Curcio in January 1976, they imprisoned him at the remote island of Asinara, northwest of Sardinia, where he shared a small windowless cell with two other captives.

But though it held him prisoner, the government found it difficult to bring him to trial. In Turin, Curcio and 52 others faced charges of armed insurrection (maximum penalty: life imprisonment). The Red Brigades responded by assassinating a prominent jurist; the trial was thereupon postponed. When the distinguished septuagenarian president of the Turin bar asked to aid in Curcio's defense, he was shot to death near his office. Curcio, who demanded the right to conduct his own defense, declared that the lawyer was a "collaborationist of the regime" and had been "executed." As the Turin trial was rescheduled to begin in May, most prospective jurors filed medical certificates excusing them from serving, and two of the six who did show up in court sobbed as they reported being threatened with death. The trial was postponed again.

In Milan, however, the authorities were determined to go ahead with elaborate pretrial procedures. Two hundred members of the bar association volunteered as defense attorneys, and nearly 1,000 stalwart citizens stepped forward for jury duty. Some 1,500 carabinieri with attack dogs and armored cars surrounded the courthouse and guarded every participant. Everyone entering the courtroom, even magistrates, had to undergo five separate security checks. "It would have been a disaster if this trial too had been postponed," said Indro Montanelli, Italy's leading conservative newspaper editor, who was shot four times in the legs by Red Brigades gunmen earlier this month. "Curcio's challenge has to be met even if we must be ready to shed blood."

The trial began with a Curcio lieutenant reading a manifesto that denounced the whole process as a "grotesque spectacle." Curcio himself pointed to the ten impassive black-robed defense attorneys and called them "crows in form and pigs in substance." When the trial reconvened after a four-day recess, he demanded to return to his cell, and the manacled prisoners clanked out of the courtroom.

Terrorist Reprisals. Outside the court, terrorist commandos disguised as carabinieri stormed two Milan factories and set them on fire, causing damage estimated at $55 million. Three Red Brigades women shot Rome University's dean of the business faculty.

But the trial went on. After a spirited defense effort was made, jurors brought in a guilty verdict for all five defendants. The sentences ranged from 2 1/2 years for the woman to seven for Curcio.

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