Songs of the Pentiti

As Red Brigades talk, their terrorist network begins to unravel

Police with submachine guns ringed Verona's 12th century Palazzo della Ragione while helicopters whirred overhead and sharpshooters kept a vigil from nearby rooftops. Inside, seven of the 16 Red Brigades terrorists accused of kidnaping U.S. Brigadier General James L. Dozier awaited the first day of their trial in two adjoining steel cages. In one were the duri (hard-liners), who have stubbornly maintained their silence during interrogation. In the other, for their own protection as much as anything else, were the pentiti (repentant ones), whose surprising willingness to betray their comrades has given Italian authorities reason to believe that they may be close to unraveling the once tight Red Brigades terrorist network.

The first major break came on Jan. 4, just 18 days after Dozier's kidnaping, when police picked up two suspected terrorists near Rome's Spanish Steps. The arrests led to raids on apartments that yielded documents containing a gold mine of information on hideouts, action plans, weapons caches--and other gang members. In all, more than 375 suspected left-wing terrorists have been arrested over the past two months.

For the first time since the Red Brigades launched their murderous campaign, officials have also rounded up numerous sympathizers who form the terrorists' underground support network. They include operatives who supplied the Brigades with information from redoubts as diverse as parliament, the office of a Cabinet minister, the army and even the police antiterrorist squad.

The prize catch is Antonio Savasta, 26, leader of the unit that abducted Dozier and a participant in 17 terrorist murders. Short, stern-faced, and clean-shaven since his Jan. 28 arrest in the Padua apartment in which Dozier was held prisoner, Savasta has fingered dozens of fellow brigatisti. He has also signed an open letter to Red Brigades members still at large, urging them to abandon their armed struggle. The message was underscored by a similar plea from the Brigades' reputed mastermind, Enrico Fenzi, 43, a onetime professor of Italian literature at the University of Genoa who was arrested in Milan last year. Wrote Fenzi: "In ten long bloody years, the armed struggle has demonstrated its inability to construct any political program whatever. The Red Brigades chapter is tragically closed."

Savasta confirmed reports that the Red Brigades had developed ties to other terrorist groups, including the Palestine Liberation Organization and West Germany's Red Army Faction. He also provided a fascinating, if as yet inconclusive, link between the Red Brigades and the Soviet bloc. In prison depositions, he claimed that the Red Brigades had been in contact with the Bulgarian embassy in Rome. One of the supposed intermediaries was Luigi Scricciolo, 35, an official of the Unione Italiana del Lavoro, one of Italy's largest trade union federations, and an alleged Red Brigades undercover agent. After Dozier was kidnaped, the embassy reportedly was willing to offer assistance in exchange for any NATO secrets the kidnapers might pry out of Dozier. (They were unsuccessful.)

Unaccustomed to assistance from terrorists, some officials wonder if the jailed Red Brigades may actually be spreading false information in order to confuse their captors. Cesare di Lenardo, a duro arrested in the Dozier kidnaping, accused the police of using torture to extract information. More likely, the spate of confessions is due in part to a proposed new law that could reduce the sentence of cooperative prisoners found guilty of murder or kidnaping to as little as twelve years. Most of the information provided by the terrorists has proved accurate.

Italian authorities are also heartened that the number of terrorist acts has dropped sharply since the beginning of this year. Still, no one is taking any chances. As Dozier returned to his desk at the headquarters of NATO'S Southern Europe land forces in Verona last week, he admitted that he had "learned his lesson" and promised to take adequate precautions for his safety.

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