Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [132]
On 16 March 1978 Moro set off for parliament to celebrate the installation of Andreotti’s new government, a coalition positively supported, rather than merely tolerated, by the PCI. Fortunately, his two-year-old grandson Luca had opted for a rival firemen’s display rather than his usual morning outing with his grandfather. Moro sat in the rear of a dark-blue Fiat 130, driven by his long-time driver, Domenico Ricci, with Oreste ‘Judo’ Leonardi, his fifty-two-year-old chief bodyguard, alongside. Three further guards, all southerners aged between twenty-five and thirty, followed in a cream Alfa Romeo. There was a regrettably predictable stop en route, the church of Santa Chiara, where Moro stopped to pray for half an hour before the start of each working day. The Red Brigades first planned to attack on this square, but the prospect of shooting the two bodyguards who accompanied Moro into the church, and the likelihood that a crocodile of schoolchildren might get in the way, induced them to find another spot more suited to their task.
The point of any terrorist attack is to concentrate firepower so as temporarily to get the edge over the much vaster forces of law and order, represented in Rome that day by about ten thousand policemen. At a bend in the Via Fani the Red Brigades team found a section of road where the vacant Bar Olivetti was separated from the road by shrubs, with a blank wall beneath a block of flats on the opposite side. This was perfect for a broadside attack. The only snag was a street flower-vendor called Antonio Spiriticchio, who set up his stall just there; the night before the attack the Red Brigades sent someone to slash the tyres of his truck. He wouldn’t be selling flowers the next day. Mario Moretti drove a stolen blue Fiat 126 in front of Moro’s convoy, keeping it in his rear mirror. He braked suddenly in the Via Fani, causing a three-way collision with the Fiat 130 and the Alfa Romeo. His companion, Barbara Balzerani, got out and ran up the road to halt oncoming traffic, with a lightweight submachine gun. Alvaro Loiacono and Alession Casimirri used a white Fiat 128 to block in the car containing Moro’s bodyguards from the rear. Valerio Morucci, Raffaele Fiore, Franco Bonsoli and Prospero Gallinari emerged from the bushes that shielded the bar. They were wearing Alitalia uniforms and caps, which had made it seem as if they were waiting for the airline minibus with their light luggage ready for a flight. They wore bullet-proof vests. Although two of the guns jammed for a moment or two, they poured automatic fire into the front of the Fiat 130, killing Moro’s driver and bodyguard, and the Alfa Romeo, where they killed two of the bodyguards instantaneously. The third guard managed to crawl out but was executed with a shot in the head. Only one of the five guards managed to get his service pistol out of its shoulder holster. Moretti dragged Moro, who was unhurt apart from scratches from flying glass, out of the Fiat, driving him a short distance before the attackers switched to a waiting van. He was put in a wooden box and removed, after another change of vehicle, to an apartment at Via Montalcini 8. Any attempts to summon help to the scene of this bloodbath were frustrated since the terrorists had disabled the local telephone junctions. For over fifty days, Moro was held in a cell created by an architect who had built a concealed partition in a bedroom. A mirror was used to recreate the illusion of lost space. Moro lay on a narrow camp bed, and was denied sanitary facilities except for a metal bowl and a cloth. Elsewhere, throughout progressive Italy, Prosecco corks popped in many apartments in celebration of this coup. In parliament there was a cross-party statement rejecting terrorism. Knee-jerk demands for the introduction of the death penalty for terrorists were refused.
The Red Brigades claimed responsibility for Moro’s abduction in