The Moro Tragedy Goes On

From the kidnapers, an impossible demand, then silence

Dear Papa,

We feel the need after so many days to convey to you with these few lines a sign of our affection. The thoughts of every moment are dedicated to you with renewed love, which from day to day grows with the knowledge of what you are and have been for us ... In this tragedy we have discovered, each one in his way, that you have given us unsuspected resources of moral strength and love. We cultivate, with prayer and deeds, the hope of seeing you again amongst us, and embracing you ... We love you profoundly.

Your Family

So read the moving letter to Aldo Moro, published in Milan's daily Il Giorno. It capped a series of urgent appeals last week from U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and other prominent figures to Moro's Red Brigades kidnapers to release unharmed the missing Christian Democratic leader and former Italian Premier. But as the agonizing human tragedy entered its seventh week, only Moro's captors knew for sure whether he was alive or dead, and they gave no hints as to what they might do next.

The week began with yet another of the terrorists' communiques, this one demanding the release of 13 leftist prisoners in exchange for Moro. Among those on the list: Red Brigades Chieftain Renato Curcio, 37, now on trial in Turin for armed insurrection, and Mario Rossi and Augusto Viel, two members of a former gang called October XXII who gained notoriety for the killing of a bank guard during a Genoa holdup in 1971. Along with the communique came another plaintive, handwritten letter from Moro addressed to Christian Democratic Secretary-General Benigno Zaccagnini. It called the party's rejection of negotiations "wicked and ungrateful." The letter went on: "It is a matter of seconds rather than minutes. We are at massacre time."

The new communique, which was discovered only two days after an earlier deadline for Moro's life had passed, once again threatened his execution. Yet even Socialists and some Christian Democrats who had favored negotiating with the terrorists agreed that the proposed prisoner exchange was an impossible demand. After another huddle with party leaders, Premier Giulio Andreotti confirmed that the government's tough stand was "a political and moral duty" that was "definitive." Yet another letter from the tragic victim was received at week's end. In it, Moro, quite possibly under duress, begs his Christian Democratic colleagues to convene a special party conference to discuss the issue of his release.

The most vehement opponents of any bargain with the kidnapers were still the Communists. Stung by the Brigatisti's repeated claims to be fighting for "Communism," the party was determined to put as much distance as possible between itself and the ultra-leftist "criminals." Arguing that a surrender to the terrorists would lead to more violence and civil war, Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer told a party youth congress in Florence: "We must be inflexible not because of a cold and abstract 'reason of state,' but because, if we yield, the democratic institutions would enter into a suicidal logic."

Meanwhile, two false alarms kept Italy on a kind of roller coaster of stage-managed drama. After an anonymous woman phoned a Rome newspaper that Moro had been released on a coastal road south of the city, police launched a ground and air search that lasted four hours. They found nothing. Next day, after another caller said Moro's body had been stuffed into the trunk of a car near his residence in Rome's Trionfale district, police pounced on that area. Again they came up emptyhanded.

The Brigatisti, however, did leave a new trail of blood with two hit-and-run attacks. In the first, Girolamo Mechelli, 54, a Christian Democratic politician, was jumped by two gunmen who pumped five bullets into his legs. In Turin, two men and a woman shot Sergio Palmieri, 41, a Fiat labor relations official, also in the legs, as he left for work. At week's end these terrorists were still at large. Authorities, however, issued arrest warrants for six men and three women who were charged with Moro's abduction and the killing of his five bodyguards. All were suspected members of the Red Brigades or a violence-prone student group called Workers Autonomy.

Like Pope Paul's unprecedented "I beg you on my knees" personal message the week before, Waldheim's appeal on prime-time television gave the Red Brigades a measure of the political recognition they seemed to crave. But it appeared to have no direct effect. Pleas from Moro's family have also come to naught. Throughout the ordeal, the family's tragic situation has often put it at odds with both the Christian Democrats and the government's investigating authorities. The family wants a negotiated release, while the government and the party feel compelled to reject any bargaining.

A psychologist and expert in experimental education, Moro's wife of 33 years, Eleonora, was meeting a group of parents whose children she was preparing for First Communion when she learned of the kidnaping. Since then, she has left her home only three times -to attend the funeral for her husband's police escort, to attend Mass on Easter Sunday, and to visit the Vatican offices of Caritas, the Catholic relief agency that volunteered to act as an intermediary. The rest of the time she has remained in seclusion in the modest yellow brick apartment building in northern Rome where the family has lived for 13 years.

Because of the hordes of sightseers and the press contingent perpetually encamped outside, Mrs. Moro, a devout Roman Catholic like her husband, has had to give up her practice of going to Mass every day. The four Moro children -Maria Fida, 32, a journalist; Anna, 29, a pediatrician; Agnese, 26, a university student and part-time employee of CISL, a labor union confederation; and Giovanni, 20, a law student at the University of Rome -have also kept a low profile.

Friends say the family is still hopeful that Moro's life may be spared. Nonetheless, Caritas last week closed its switchboard at night, no longer seeing the need to listen 24 hours a day for a possible signal from the kidnapers. Its well-advertised phone number had been dialed only by cranks or nameless volunteers offering to replace Moro as a hostage. From the kidnapers, apart from the latest cruel communique, there came only silence. qed

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