253 Red Brigade Guerrillas Cleared in Insurrection Case

An Italian court Friday acquitted 253 Red Brigade guerrillas--many of whom are already jailed for other terrorist crimes--of charges of armed insurrection against the state.

Judges, who deliberated the verdict for four days after an eight-month trial, said the defendants had never organized a serious attempt to overthrow the Italian republic.

The acquittals had been expected because of three previous rulings dating to 1970. In these rulings, Italian courts refused to accept the legal concept that domestic terrorism amounts to a political attack or the waging of war against the state.

Ironically, the acquittals were a blow to the prestige of the Red Brigades, which has sought to have its acts of terrorism formally recognized as armed insurrection.

All 253 defendants had already been sentenced in earlier trials for crimes committed in the late 1970s, when the guerrillas carried out hundreds of shootings and robberies. This time, they were tried only on the single charge of “conducting armed insurrection against the state and civil war.”

The defendants included Prospero Gallinari, the convicted killer of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and Red Brigades founder Renato Curcio.