Swiss Refuse to Extradite Italian Terrorist Suspect

The Swiss government Friday ruled out the extradition to Italy of an Italian-born man arrested in connection with the 1978 kidnap-murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro but said he would probably face trial here.

Alvaro Lojacono, 33, seized in Switzerland on Wednesday night on a tip from Italian police, was granted Swiss citizenship in 1986 and so cannot be sent to trial in Italy against his will, according to Justice Department spokesman Joerg Kistler.

Legal sources in Lugano, the southeastern Swiss town where Lojacono was seized, said he had already refused extradition.

The Italian police are likely to request a Swiss trial for Lojacono, who is being held in a prison near the village where he had lived with his Swiss mother since 1986, Kistler said.

Lojacono, who had been working part-time compiling quizzes for Swiss radio under his mother’s name, Baragiola, is suspected of being part of a nine-member terrorist Red Brigades team that seized Moro from his car on March 16, 1978, and killed five bodyguards.

Moro’s bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car 55 days later in what was one of the most notorious crimes of the Red Brigades.

Lojacono had been on the run since 1980, when an Italian appeals court upheld a 16-year jail sentence against him for the killing of a member of the extreme-right Italian Social Movement.