WORLD : 168 in Red Brigades Acquitted

A Rome court today acquitted 168 Red Brigades guerrillas charged with armed insurrection and inciting civil war, saying the left-wing group had never seriously endangered the Italian republic.

All the defendants in the two-week trial had been sentenced to long jail terms for guerrilla crimes in other cases.

Judges at the trial said that although the Red Brigades had committed serious crimes during the height of their power in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they had posed no serious danger to democratic institutions.

Officials said a number of defendants were swiftly removed from the court today when they began shouting slogans supporting the left-wing guerrilla murder in West Germany last month of Deutsche Bank President Alfred Herrhausen.