The Blood-Hungry Red Brigades

Their symbol is a five-pointed star, its two lower points exaggerated as in a child's awkward drawing. Below are the words Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades). This shadowy underground organization, with an estimated hard-core membership of no more than a few hundred, has become the deadliest and the most dreaded of Italy's far-left extremist groups. Since the Moro kidnaping last week, the Red Brigades have also become the most hunted.

According to police, 148 brigatisti are already in jail, and warrants are out for an additional 25. Of the detainees, 39 have been convicted of or charged with murder, 13 with attempted homicide, 55 with kidnaping, 30 with robbery, a few with lesser offenses. Little is known about the Brigades, but some brigatisti, it is certain, have been schooled at the same Palestinian guerrilla camps that trained members of West Germany's murderous Baader-Meinhof gang.

Renato Curcio, 36, the handsome, bearded convict who is thought to have founded the organization, exemplifies the movement and its methods. Curcio, now on trial in Turin with 48 other brigatisti,* established a leftist splinter group at the University of Trento in 1967. Members immersed themselves in Marx, Mao and Che Guevara.

In 1969 Curcio married a fellow radical, Margherita Cagol, code-named "Comrade Mara." The two moved to Milan, where they swiftly became zealots of armed struggle. The Red Brigades were set up in November 1970 as "an armed proletariat vanguard to be the revolutionary power of the exploited classes." The Communists, in the organization's view, had sold out; the aim of the brigatisti, much like that of 19th century anarchists, was to purify society by overthrowing all existing institutions. But the Red Brigades seem to have no coherent vision of what would replace them.

At first, kidnaping was the prime instrument of terror: plant managers, executives and judges were abducted, subjected to humiliating "people's trials," and then released. In 1974 came the first murders; one of the victims was the chief inspector of the antiterrorist squad in Turin. Curcio was arrested in September of that year, tried and imprisoned, then sprung in a daring 1975 commando raid led by his wife. A few months later, Comrade Mara was killed in a police Shootout. In 1976 Curcio was recaptured in a Milan apartment.

Nothing demonstrates the Red Brigades' methods more chillingly than the campaign of terror that members have conducted since the Turin trial began in May 1976. That first trial was postponed when a defendant announced that brigatisti were responsible for the assassination of Genoa's chief public prosecutor and two assistants just the day before. Last April, as the trial was to resume, brigatisti fatally shot Fulvio Croce, 76, president of the Turin Bar Association, whose appointment as Curcio's defense counsel made him a "collaborationist of the regime." Jurors suddenly found excuses not to serve, and dozens of lawyers refused to act as defense attorneys.

The intimidation continues. Two weeks ago, another Turin police anti-terrorist specialist, Rosario Berardi, 52, was killed, shot seven times while waiting for a streetcar. A phone call from the Red Brigades promised that a woman juror would be next. Four defense lawyers abruptly resigned, and the trial was postponed again. Would it resume? Yes, declared Turin's mayor, Diego Novelli. "This is the only real answer that democracy can give."

* Including Curcio, 15 are in custody; the others are being tried in absentia.

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