AP News, February 12th, 2007
Police conducted raids across northern Italy on Monday, breaking up a leftist militant group that was allegedly planning kidnappings or kneecappings of victims to finance its plots, Milan prosecutors said. Police said they arrested 15 suspects in Milan, Turin, Padua and other northern Italian cities.
"We prevented dangerous persons who considered themselves in war with this state from carrying out violent actions," Prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told a news conference in Milan.
The militants, in devising plans to finance their group, were divided among themselves whether to carry out kidnappings for ransom or to kneecap victims to try to force them to reveal where they kept their money, Boccassini said.
Police said the group had ideological ties to the Red Brigades movement, which terrorized Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
Vittorio Feltri, a prominent conservative journalist, and Pietro Ichino, an economist who writes commentary for Milan daily Corriere della Sera, were told by police that they were among the targets.
"I have to say I didn't jump for joy," Feltri said.
"You have to go on, not lower your head, continue to write, otherwise they win, intimidation wins," Ichino told state TV.
Italian news reports, citing judicial sources, said a house in Milan owned by former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and media interests, including Berlusconi's Mediaset were among the militants' targets. Sky TG24, a private TV network, said that its own network was among the targets.
The group raided by police "was a structured and highly dangerous organization," said Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, whose ministry includes state police and civilian intelligence agents.
"The one (group) we broke up, we know, isn't the last," the minister said.
The investigation into the group began in 2004, when police searched a Milan basement where they found documents, a blowtorch, a timer and other electronic equipment, the statement said.
The Red Brigades plagued Italy with attacks that included the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former Premier Aldo Moro. After about a decade of silence, an offshoot group reappeared, killing two government advisers in 1999 and 2002.
The group targeted in Monday's raids financed itself through armed robberies and spread propaganda in leftist clubs and in factories where some of the alleged members worked, anti-terrorism official Giovanni Calesini told SKY TG24 TV.
