Aldo Moro was a popular politician in Italy whose 1978 kidnapping by the Red Brigades became an international cause. Heads of state rebuked the Marxist terrorist group who were holding this five-time prime minister hostage; the Brigades called for the release of political prisoners in Italy in exchange for Moro's life. Fifty-five days after the abduction, Moro's body was found in the trunk of a car parked on a busy street in Rome. It was one of 2,395 acts of terrorism in Italy that year alone.
Moro was born in 1916 in Lecce. His mother was a teacher, and his father worked for the Italian ministry of public instruction as an inspector. Aldo was sometimes teased by other children because of his weight but earned good grades and went on to study law at the University of Bari. A devout Catholic, he was an active member of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (Federation of Italian University Catholics, or FUCI) during the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. When Moro moved to Rome for further study, he was elected national president of the group. He was drafted by the military in 1942, at the height of Italy's involvement in World War II, but the fascist regime ended the next year with an invasion of Allied forces. Moro then helped organize the new Christian Democratic Party in the Puglia region.
By 1945, Moro was a professor of law at the University of Bari. Elected the next year to the Constituent Assembly on the Christian Democratic ticket, he became the youngest member appointed to a committee to draft Italy's new postwar constitution. He was elected to Italy's Chamber of Deputies in 1948 and also served as undersecretary to the foreign minister until 1950. In 1954, he was named to his first cabinet post as minister of justice, and during his stint he implemented sweeping prison reform measures. He also served as minister for public instruction and became secretary of the Christian Democrats in 1959. But by then it was a badly fractured party, and Moro worked to rally the members into agreement. He argued that its main focus should be opposition to the Italian Communist Party. This meant allying with some of Italy's more right-wing parties, however, which was distasteful to Moro. He sought to form a coalition that was both anti-Communist and anti-Fascist. To do so, he allied the Christian Democrats with Italy's Socialist Party, which had broken with the Communist Party. The agreement came to be known as the apertura a sinistra, or "opening to the left."
The strategy was a success at the polls, and Moro formed his first government as prime minister in 1963. He headed three others between 1963 and June of 1968, and two more in the 1970s. By then, however, the Communist Party had gained in strength, and so Moro urged Christian Democrats toward the Compromesso Storico or "Historic Compromise," which began in 1976 and lasted three years. In the political deal, the Communists in Italy's Parliament promised not to vote against the Christian Democrats, and in return they were allowed an unofficial voice in government and some important posts in Parliament as well. The Compromesso Storico was a topic of heated debate in Italy, and some of Moro's Christian Democrat associates opposed it vehemently. A far-left terrorist organization, the Brigate Rosso, or "Red Brigades," denounced the Communist Party members who had agreed to it. Founded in November of 1970 by Renato Curcio, a committed Marxist, the Red Brigades began voicing opposition to Italian politics by firebombing factories and then began kidnapping prominent officials and private citizens. Italian law-enforcement authorities had arrested several members but had a difficult time hampering the group's activities. By 1978, the Red Brigades were believed to have 400 to 500 active members, a thousand other sympathizers who assisted their efforts, and a few thousand others who financed them.
On March 16, 1978, Moro left his home in Rome to attend a special session of Parliament. Red Brigade members killed his five bodyguards and kidnapped him. They sent word a few days later calling for the release of thirteen Red Brigade members on trial or awaiting trial for terrorist activities; Curcio was one of them. A series of communiqu‚s traveled between Moro, the kidnappers, the Moro family, law-enforcement personnel, and Christian Democratic officials. Moro urged Italian officials to acquiesce to the demands and save his life. Some felt this was evidence that Moro was being tortured or had been subjected to doses of mind-altering drugs, but he pointed out in other letters that his belief in the validity of prisoner exchanges predated his capture.
There was talk of a possible prisoner exchange, to be supervised by the Vatican, but it never materialized. Pope Paul VI, as well as heads of state from around the world, made public appeals to spare Moro's life. U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim spoke with members of the Red Brigades via satellite television, to no avail. On May 9, Moro's body was discovered in the trunk of a car that had been parked in the center of Rome. He had been shot with a pistol and a semi-automatic weapon. The car had been abandoned at exactly the half-way point between the national headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist parties.
The Moro murder shocked the world. What little popular support the Brigades enjoyed vanished, but Italian authorities still had a difficult time bringing the culprits to justice. Only the kidnapping of U.S. Brigadier General James Dozier in 1982 helped crack the case and lead to the arrest of several key Red Brigade members. In early 1983, fifty-nine defendants stood trial in Rome for Moro's death and that of 16 others. Red Brigade informants were shielded from their former comrades by bulletproof glass, and the defendants were enclosed in steel cages. Mario Moretti, 36, received life in prison for masterminding the Moro kidnapping, and Prospero Gallinari, 33, received a life sentence as well for the actual murder. Moro's murder became the turning point for domestic terrorism in Italy; by 1982, the number of acts had declined to 602.
This is the complete article, containing 1,012 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
