‘It Was the Italian September 11’: Forty Years Since the Abduction of Aldo Moro

As the United Kingdom recovers from the shocking poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, an event that brings back memories of the Cold War, Italy on Friday remembers its most prominent victim of the ideological conflicts between the West and the East. On this day, 40 years ago, on March 16, 1978, former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who served two terms, was ambushed by Red Brigades terrorists and kidnapped.

Moro was on his way to the Italian parliament where he was to participate in a confidence vote for the new center-right government led by Christian Democrat Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. Members of the Red Brigades killed five of Moro’s bodyguards and took him to a hideout to be tried by a “people’s court” composed of the kidnappers themselves.

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As the leader of the Christian Democracy Party (DC), Moro was accused of being the main architect of the “historic compromise” between the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Christian Democrats that led to the formation of Andreotti’s government. The makeshift kidnapping court found him guilty and executed him.

After 55 days of captivity, his bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car parked equidistant from the DC and PCI headquarters in central Rome.

Italian 9/11

– It was the Italian September 11, wrote Ezio Mauro, editor of La Repubblica, this week.

– There are places that tell us about events. Every day I pass through that area and cannot help but think of the spring of 1978 and Italy exhausted by a terrible decade, he wrote.

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Moro’s kidnapping and murder were the culmination of Italy’s “Years of Lead,” a period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s characterized by political violence. Since the bombing of Milan’s Piazza Fontana in 1969, which killed 17 people, and the Bologna massacre, the bombing of the city’s main train station in 1980, which killed 85 people, hundreds of attacks and murders were carried out. The Red Brigades were one of the deadliest groups of that era.

– In 1975, the Red Brigades changed their strategy and began a frontal fight against the Italian state, says historian Philippe Foro.

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The circumstances of Moro’s murder, however, have never been fully clarified, and there are numerous conspiracy theories in Italy about why he was targeted.

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During his captivity, Moro wrote a series of letters to his family, Andreotti, and Pope Paul VI, urging the Red Brigades to release him. In one letter to his wife, Moro wrote that “his blood would be on their hands,” but he did not explain who he meant. He added that he had gained many opponents by advocating for the policy of historical compromise with the communists “in NATO, in the Italian secret service, in politics…”

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Many still believe that Italy did not do everything it could to find and free him and that he was deliberately sacrificed to keep certain state secrets swept under the rug.

– The power of the Communist Party in the most important Mediterranean country was unacceptable to the United States, and the Soviets also saw a threat in the historical compromise, said Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, who presided over the subsequent trial for Moro’s kidnapping.

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Culture Minister Dario Franceschini believes that Moro’s case can offer a lesson to a country caught in a political stalemate.

– He convinced two electoral winners, neither of whom had a majority, to support the government, he said this week. – And what was valuable to leaders in the past is also valuable to those today.