Red Brigades
Italian terrorist group
The Red Brigades (Italian: Brigate Rosse [briˈɡaːte ˈrosse], often abbreviated BR) were an Italian far-left Marxist–Leninist militant group. It was responsible for numerous violent attacks during Italy's Years of Lead, including the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978, a former prime minister of Italy through the organic centre-left. The assassination of Moro was a national shock in Italy, as was that of left-wing trade unionist Guido Rossa in January 1979. Sandro Pertini, the then left-wing president of Italy, said at Rossa's funeral: "It is not the President of the Republic speaking, but comrade Pertini. I knew [the real] red brigades: they fought with me against the fascists, not against democrats. For shame!"
Formed in 1970, the Red Brigades sought to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle, and to remove Italy from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The organization attained notoriety in the 1970s and early 1980s with their violent acts of sabotage, bank robberies, the kneecapping of certain industrialists, factory owners, bankers, and politicians deemed to be exploitative, as well as the kidnappings or murders of industrialists, prominent capitalists, politicians, law enforcement officials, and other perceived enemies of the working-class revolution. Nearly fifty people were killed in its attacks between 1974 and 1988. According to the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the BR was a "broadly diffused" terrorist group.
Models for the BR included the Latin American urban guerrilla movements and the World War II era Italian partisan movement.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Red Brigades” is italian terrorist group. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Brigades, Italian and terrorist, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q194019. VIAF identifies the subject as 124870952. The Library of Congress control number is n2008031625. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1979, 1970 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Red Brigades” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.