Grannie' trial

Press, 30 October 1981, Page 6

Grannie' trial

NZPA Genoa Caterina Picasso, the 74-year-old “grandmother” of the Red Brigades, has gone on trial. Also nicknamed “Machinegun Grannie,” she salutes with a clenched fist and wears a long, red scarf over a traditional black suit.

Some of her neighbours say that she has been “duped" by Left-wing terrorists, that she acted in good faith when she sheltered urban guerrillas in her Genoa home.

But the 74-year-old widow told a local court yesterday that she had joined Italy’s most feared terrorist group of her own free will.

She is being tried along with 47 terrorist suspects and risks several years in jail, if convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms and membership in an armed band.

“I helped the comrades who are struggling against an unjust State,” she told the court and declared herself a “political prisoner.” A long time supporter of Italian Left-wing parties, Caterina Picasso, formerly a maid and then a pensioner, allegedly joined the terrorist group a few years ago. She was arrested in October last year in her apartment, on the outskirts of Genoa, where the police seized arms, ammunition.

and -a file of the Red Brigades.

According to trial documents, she also sheltered a number of terrorists, members of hit-and-run ambush squads, including Riccardo Dura, a reputed leader of the Genoa-based Red Brigades groups. Dura was killed in a shootout with the police in March, 1980.

One of her neighbours told journalists that the old woman had a great affection for Dura “and ..this perhaps can explain her behaviour. She liked to call him a nephew."