Bellissimo!

A terrorist leader is caught

It was just after dark when over a hundred plainclothes police moved into a quiet, middleclass, residential neighborhood of Milan last week. Squad cars crept inconspicuously into position to seal off a block-long stretch of the Via Negroli. Armed carabinieri stationed themselves behind parked cars and in the courtyard of the apartment buildhig at No. 30. Their prey: Corrado Alunni, 30, one of the ringleaders in the Red Brigades kidnaping and assassination of Christian Democratic Party Leader Aldo Moro last spring.

A ten-man team of antiterrorist specialists, equipped with submachine guns and bulletproof vests, broke open the door of apartment No. 2 and seized a stocky man clad in a pair of shorts who surrendered readily: "Yes, I am Corrado Alunni and I regard myself as a political prisoner."

The capture was the first major police break in the biggest man hunt in Italian history. Alunni, one of the most violent and ruthless of Moro's Red Brigades kidnapers, is also believed to have participated in the killings of Moro's five bodyguards, three police officers, two court officials and a newspaper editor. Though police had spotted him six weeks earlier, they refrained from making an immediate swoop. Instead, police in disguise kept him under constant surveillance. This classic counterespionage maneuver paid off. Just six hours after Alunni's capture, police picked up one more suspected Red Brigades terrorist in what promises to be a roundup. Said a jubilant officer of the antiterrorist squad: ''Finally, the Moro murder investigation is going bellissimo. " qed

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