Verdicts Against Anarchy

A tumultuous trial ends--and the killing continues

Not in recent times, if ever, had an Italian trial been conducted in such an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Less than a month after Renato Curcio, founder of Italy's notorious Red Brigades, and 45 other defendants were brought to trial in Turin in 1976 on charges of subversion and other crimes, Genoa Chief Prosecutor Francesco Coco was gunned down. One of the defendants announced in court that the murder was committed by brigatisti, and the trial was postponed. Then, shortly before the court was to convene again a year later, Fulvio Croce, president of the Turin Bar Association and newly appointed chief defense counsel, was murdered. Once again, the trial was postponed. Finally, last March the proceedings resumed. Despite yet another murder, of a police inspector who had helped apprehend one of the defendants, Judge Guido Barbaro vowed that the trial would go on.

So it did. Last week after nearly four months of testimony and five days of deliberation, the four-man, two-woman jury. which under Italian law was joined by Barbaro and his assistant judge, returned its verdict. It acquitted 16 of the defendants, ordered a new trial for one and found 29 guilty; Curcio, 37, got the maximum sentence: 15 years.

Throughout the trial, the 15 defendants in custody (26 were free on their own recognizance, five are still at large), kept up an emotional tirade against the judge, the jury and their own defense counsel. But when Judge Barbaro read the verdict, as more than 800 carabinieri and other police ringed the courthouse, the defendants were absent from the steel-barred cage in which they had been kept during the proceedings. They had all elected to remain in their cells as a protest against what they called a "court of the regime."

The defendants who were in custody made no pretense of innocence. In a final statement, read by four of the defendants, they told the court that all those on trial were militant Red Brigades members who assumed "collectively and in entirety responsibility for every one of its past, present and future actions." The kidnap-murder of former Premier Aldo Moro this spring by other Red Brigades terrorists, declared one of the defendants, was "a leap forward of high quality." Even as the jury was deliberating, two gunmen followed former Antiterrorist Squad Chief Antonio Esposito, 36, onto a Genoa bus and shot and killed him before horrified passengers. They then drove off in the car of a waiting accomplice. Meanwhile, the police have had little to say about the progress of the Moro case itself since the arrest last month of six people who have been charged (along with five others still at large) with complicity in Moro's assassination.

But for the moment, even the Moro case is being overshadowed by new political turmoil. Two weeks ago, Italian President Giovanni Leone resigned following allegations of profiteering and tax evasion. The maneuvering leading up to voting in Parliament beginning this week to choose a new President is putting a heavy strain on the government of Christian Democratic Premier Giulio Andreotti. The choice of a new President may well be settled in a three-way tug of war between the Christian Democrats, the Communists, and the Socialists in combination with the smaller centrist parties. Summed up Benigno Zaccagnini, Christian Democratic Party secretary and a front runner for the presidency: "In this dramatic Italian spring, we are living through events that will be decisive for the history of our country."

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