Red Brigades strike with bloody kidnap

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 8

Red Brigades strike with bloody kidnap

NZPA-Reuter Naples Italian Red Brigades terrorists were holding their latest kidnap victim yesterday pending “trial” after a bloody commando operation in Naples aimed at exploiting the widespread bitterness in the earthquake-damaged city. A police hunt was under way to find the “people’s prison” where the Brigades are holding Giro Cirillo, the prominent Neapolitan politician they snatched on Monday night. In a 140-page tract issued yesterday, the Brigades accused Mr Cirillo of being a savage property speculator and said he would answer the charges in a “trial.” Up to 10 guerrillas kidnapped the 60-year-old Christian Democrat leader after clubbing him on the head and killing his two escorts. The attack proved that the Brigades were not wiped out by recent arrests and that their attention has shifted to the poor south, where over 200,000 people are still home-

less after last November's earthquake. The old, working-class centre of Naples was rendered almost uninhabitable by the earthquake and the Brigades said city authorites were “deporting” families to industrial suburbs. Although Naples is now run by its first Communist administration; the Brigades said the Christian Democrats were responsible for bringing “the slavery of salaried labour” to the city and destroying its traditional artisan life. The documents found yesterday, with a photograph of the balding Mr Cirillo in front of a Brigades flag, listed the main firms seeking contracts to rebuild areas wrecked by the earthquake. Mr Cirillo is chairman of the commission in charge of reconstruction. No demands were made in the Brigades text, but if they stick to their own precedent other communiques will follow soon. They said they were keep-

ing to the “strategic line” adopted last December when j they kidnapped a senior: Roman judge, Giovanni D’Urso, in a bid to gain | concessions for their jailed! comrades. • In that month-long ordeal, recalling the kidnap and eventual murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, the Brigades' forced the Government to speed up closure of a topsecurity prison before freeing the judge, unharmed. Italy’s guerrilla groups, and in particular the Bri-I gades, used to be weak in Naples and the south but the mood of public despair at the city's plight since the earthquake may have encouraged them to kidnap Mr Cirillo. Angry marches by the homeless and unemployed are virtual daily events in Naples and the Brigades seem to be hoping to harness some of that bitterness to their cause. Yesterday’s communique denounced even the Leftwing groups of unemployed, calling them “revisionist hyenas.”