‘Brigate Rosse’, or the Red Brigades
Somewhat in the mold of Baader-Meinhof and the Japanese Red Army was the Italian Red Brigades, active from about 1978 to the end of the 1980s. This was a period of ongoing political upheaval and instability in Italian politics, characterized by economic stagnation and numerous ad hoc left and right-wing terror groups.
The Red Brigades, as its name implies, was Marxist-Maoist in orientation, with additional ideological flourishes supplied by the likes of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and one or two of the more charismatic African revolutionary heroes.
The Red Brigades was an extremely shady and fluid organization, reputedly founded by a twenty-nine-year-old militant student by the name of Renato Curcio. The stated aim of the organization, not particularly original, was to provoke a proletarian uprising in order to overthrow the Italian government in favor of a Marxist workers republic.
The usual tactics of assassination, kidnapping and bombing achieved the usual results, and rather a significant body count was accumulated by the Red Brigades between 1971 and 1988. This included the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and the successful kidnapping of a U.S. Army officer with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Brigadier General James Dozier.
There was, however, a misdirected and sinister mood that surrounded the Red Brigades, and because it was so secretive and so loosely organized, it was difficult for the authorities to get to grips with.