9 Members of Red Brigades Splinter Group Arrested : New Breed of Terrorists Emerges in Italy, Police Say

After one of their biggest anti-terrorist raids in recent years, the Italian national police focused Monday on what it called a new breed of low-profile Red Brigades extremists who camouflage themselves in big-city anonymity.

Examining magistrates met in Milan to examine evidence seized Friday in a terrorist hide-out, an apartment on the outskirts of the city. Police questioned nine Red Brigades suspects arrested after the raid.

Government sources said the raid may have short-circuited a major Red Brigades attack in Milan.

Machine Guns, Cash Found

At the two-room, fifth-floor apartment, raiders found machine guns, pistols, a hand grenade, $47,000 in cash and considerable propaganda material. Red Brigades leaflets in the apartment claimed responsibility for three recent assassinations, including that of Christian Democratic Sen. Roberto Ruffilli in April.

Also found were disguises of the sort used by the killers of Ruffilli. The police suspect that one of the weapons in the apartment may have been used to killed Ruffilli, who was a friend and adviser of Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita. The cash was believed to have come from a postal van holdup in Rome last year in which two policemen were killed.

Terrorist Splinter Group

The police said that the nine people arrested were members of the Fighting Communist Party, a Brigades splinter group that claimed responsibility for the slaying of Ruffilli. Three of them acknowledged their membership when they were arrested and claimed to be “political prisoners,” the police said.

Police sources said authorities believe the nine suspects were planning a major assassination or robbery. They said that material seized in the apartment might lead to other Red Brigades hide-outs in Milan and in Rome, where the Brigades are thought to have their headquarters.

Police were surprised to learn that none of the nine had a criminal record or known terrorist associations. In the past, Red Brigades members usually lived clandestinely under false identities as full-time terrorists. They were often known to the police, either because they had been identified through investigations or by repentant terrorists.

“One disturbing point is that the people we have arrested never had anything to do with subversion and were very successful in blending into the background,” Interior Minister Antonio Gava said.

A spokesmen for anti-terrorist police in Milan called the arrested people “anonymous faces, absolute unknowns.”

Two of the nine were women, and one of these was a nurse; the other worked in a railway workers’ cafeteria. Of the men, one collected garbage, another was active in an association of tenants, another was an electrician. One had worked in an auto plant.

Recruitment Goal

Judging from the seized propaganda material, the Milan group intended to canvass for terrorist recruits among blue-collar workers in Italian factories where there is labor unrest and the threat of layoffs.

The ultra-leftist Red Brigades convulsed Italy in the 1970s in a fruitless attempt to overthrow the political system. Most Red Brigades leaders are in jail or in exile, and many have abandoned the cause, but police believe there are still about 200 committed terrorists in Italy.