Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

578 • RED BRIGADESarson, kidnapping, kneecapping, or murder if protection money wasnot paid. The BR seldom made use of bombing, except on 3 May1979 in attacking the Christian Democratic Party headquarters inRome, although it used firebombs to initiate acts of arson.During the period 1974–1988, there were at least 50 noteworthyattacks committed by the BR, as well as 47 assassinations, 19 casesof kneecapping of victims, and 13 kidnappings. Four kidnappings forransom alone netted the BR around $6 million. Like the Red ArmyFaction, the BR undertook many of its kidnappings and attacks onbehalf of imprisoned comrades, either to pressure the judicial systemto release them or else to take revenge on jurists and police involvedin their capture and convictions. The waves of assassinations of juristseventually caused Italian magistrates to go on strike in July 1980in protest over their lack of security. During 1978–1980, called byItalians the “years of lead,” hardly a day went by without an armedattack, political murder, kidnapping, or other terrorist action due tothe Brigades, similar leftist groups, and imitators, as well as by Italianneo-Fascists, such as the Avanguardia Nazionale, Black Order,and the Revolutionary Armed Nuclei.Three events stand out in the history of the Brigades: Inspired bythe Red Army Faction’s kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the BRkidnapped the head of the Christian Democratic Party and former primeminister, Aldo Moro, on 16 March 1978, killing five of his bodyguards.Moro was killed 55 days later. While the BR viewed this as a greatvictory, Italian society at large viewed it with revulsion and the Italiangovernment empowered its security forces to suspend certain civil libertiesto crack down on the Brigades and similar groups. On 17 December1981, in Verona, the BR kidnapped U.S. Army Brigadier General JamesDozier, who was rescued by Italian counterterrorist police in Padua on28 January 1982. The decision to kidnap a senior North Atlantic TreatyOrganization (NATO) officer had been inspired partly through a desireto show solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Organization bystriking at an “imperialist” target. The BR connection with Palestinianterrorists was more obvious when on 15 February 1984 the group assassinatedan American, Leamon Hunt, the director of the multinationalobserver team stationed in the Sinai Peninsula charged with overseeingthe peace accord between Egypt and Israel, apparently with weaponsprovided by Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions agents. Followingthis murder, the BR carried out another three assassinations of