Former BR Leonardo Bertulazzi escapes from house arrest in Buenos Aires

The former Red Brigade Leonardo Bertulazzi, 74 years old, escaped from the house arrest he was under in Buenos Aires. His lawyer told Ansa.

The General Directorate of Criminal Intelligence has issued an urgent alert to trace him immediately. Bertulazzi was under house arrest in an apartment in the center of Buenos Aires. After his refugee status was revoked, he managed to elude authorities and flee, immediately sparking a nationwide manhunt.

Escaped before extradition

Before the escape, the Argentine justice had also rejected the last appeal of Bertulazzi's lawyer, Rodolfo Yanzon, against extradition. And Interpol, according to what the defender himself reported to Ansa, was already ready to pick up the former BR and take him to Italy.

The final sentence of 27 years

Bertulazzi was definitively sentenced to 27 years for the kidnapping of the industrialist Pietro Costa and for an armed gang. He was arrested in 2024 after 44 years on the run in South America. In the 1970s he was part of the Genoese column of the Red Brigades and participated in the kidnapping of the engineer Pietro Costa, whose family paid a billion lire ransom. This sum was used by the Red Brigades to purchase the apartment in Via Montalcini in Rome which the following year would become Aldo Moro's prison. Arrested for the first time in 2002, Bertulazzi was freed by an Argentine court, since the country does not allow extradition in cases where a defendant is convicted in absentia. Buenos Aires in the meantime had granted the terrorist political refugee status, which was revoked in 2024.