Six suspects held in Red Brigades murder probe

Italian police today arrested six alleged Red Brigades terrorists suspected of killing a Labour Ministry consultant in 1999 – the first attack by the left-wing terrorist group in more than a decade, news reports said.

Three of the arrests were carried out in Rome, two in Florence and one in Sardinia, the Italian news agency ANSA said. The six suspects included two women.

Police officials in Rome were not immediately available for comment.

The government adviser, Massimo D’Antona, was gunned down outside his house in Rome in 1999. He was working on bitterly contested labour reform.

The murder was claimed by an offshoot of the Red Brigades, the leftist group that terrorised Italy in the 1970s and ’80s with shootings and bombings.

Three years later, the same group claimed responsibility for the killing of another labour consultant working on the same reform, Marco Biagi.

The Red Brigades had largely faded away until the D’Antona killing.

The original Red Brigades became one of the most notorious terror groups in 1978 when they kidnapped former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, holding him for two months before killing him.