A group claiming to be an offshoot of the Red Brigades guerrilla movement posted a 26-page message on the Internet yesterday saying it had "executed" a top government adviser in a crime that has rocked Italy.
Marco Biagi, 52, was gunned down Tuesday night in the northern city of Bologna with the same pistol that the shadowy Red Brigades party used to kill another government aide in 1999.
The original Red Brigades were responsible for murdering a slew of politicians, businessmen and policemen in the late 1970s and 1980s. Their most notorious outrage - the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former prime minister Aldo Moro - aimed to bring down the Italian state but in effect strengthened it by alienating even their sympathizers.
In a diatribe against modern capitalism, the new group declared on the Internet that "an armed nucleus of our organization executed Marco Biagi" and accused the Labour Ministry adviser of "exploiting" workers with the labour reforms he had co-authored.
The killing was carried out at a time of political and social tension in Italy regarding planned changes to long-standing employment statutes that have prompted Italy's major unions to call a general strike.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has called for unity and asked union leaders to call off the strike. But the labour groups have said they refuse to bow to violence and will go ahead as planned in April.
They have also called for mass demonstrations next Wednesday to denounce terrorism.
The new generation of Red Brigades guerrillas' message, said Biagi's labour reforms were a "regulation of the exploitation of salaried workers."
Biagi's murder has raised fears of a resurgence in political terrorism, especially after officials identified the pistol as the one used by the party to kill another Labour Ministry adviser, Massimo D'Antona three years before.
Biagi had received a series of telephone threats after a police escort was deemed unnecessary and suspended last year.
Police are trying to track down the killers who may have been caught on film by a train station camera when Biagi pulled into Bologna. From there, he bicycled home and was in front of his door when he was shot in the neck.
Following Moro's murder, police launched a massive crackdown on the Red Brigades and by the early 1980s, the guerrilla movement was believed to have been wiped out.
But every few years, a new attack reminds Italians that fringe offshoots, however small, are still out there.
(China Daily March 22, 2002)
