Lethal Friends

Italy's journalistic hit men

As a correspondent for the prestigious Milan daily Corriere della Sera, Walter Tobagi, 33, was widely known for his writing about Italian terrorism. Too widely known. As he left his home one morning last May, two young gunmen shot him to death, then fled in a waiting Peugeot sedan. Within hours, the notorious Red Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder in a long communique attacking the Italian press. The bulletin was signed by a newly created branch of the terrorist organization known as the March 28 Brigade, named for the date in 1980 when four Red Brigades members died in a shootout with Genoa police.

Last week, after a stunning series of raids in Milan, Bologna and other cities, police officials announced that among some 70 members of the Red Brigades arrested, they had captured the entire six-member March 28 contingent. To the astonishment of many Italians, the alleged journalistic assassins included the sons of a prominent publisher, a newspaper writer and several leading manufacturers.

March 28 was formed last spring by six young would-be terrorists who wanted to join the Red Brigades. So the Brigades gave them an initiation test: silence Tobagi. Mission accomplished, they were evidently given a second assignment: kill Giorgio Bocca, a special correspondent for Rome's daily La Repubblica and a columnist for the weekly Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso. The plot fizzled when Bocca was alerted to two suspicious-looking young men loitering near his house last June, and called police. The men escaped. Other journalists are believed to have been marked for assassination by the March 28 group. But before the killings could be carried out, a suspected member of the group, Marco Barbone, 22, was picked up by police last month for questioning on other terrorist activities. Barbone blurted out a confession, admitting the Tobagi murder to startled police and naming his fellow cell members.

Barbone's father, Donato Barbone, is the editorial director of Sansoni, part of Rizzoli, the second largest publisher in Italy. Among the other alleged hit men were Paolo Morandini, 21, the son of Il Giorno Film Critic Morando Morandini, and Francesco Giordano, 28, a former advertising staff member at Il Giorno.

Friends and family members refused at first to believe that the six could be terrorists. One of the incredulous was La Repubblica Reporter Guido Passalacqua, 37, who was wounded in Milan last May by the same gun that killed Tobagi. Last week when police showed him pictures of his accused attackers, Passalacqua recognized two of them. Said he, pointing to a photograph of Giordano: "But he's a friend of mine. We've had dinner together many times. He's a friend. I don't understand .'' He was not alone.

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