A 74-year-old Italian man convicted of a 1970s kidnapping by a far-left militant group has escaped from house arrest in Argentina and is currently evading authorities.
The Escape and Manhunt
Leonardo Bertulazzi used a harness to abseil down from a fifth-floor balcony located in the capital city of Buenos Aires. His escape went unnoticed initially because he had tampered with his electronic ankle monitor, allowing it to continue transmitting body temperature measurements after he had forced it open and fled.
Authorities grew suspicious when they observed that the tracking device had stayed in one place. Upon entering the apartment in central Buenos Aires, law enforcement officers found the property empty with only the ankle monitor left behind.
According to the Argentine newspaper Clarín, police deployed explosives experts out of concern that the device might have been booby-trapped, given Bertulazzi’s history with the Marxist guerrilla group the Red Brigades and his bomb-making expertise. The specialists determined that the tampering was done solely to prevent the alarm from triggering when the device was removed. A nationwide manhunt has been launched, and Italian media report that his extradition to Italy was imminent following the rejection of his final appeal.
Background and Criminal History
Bertulazzi had previously spent decades as a fugitive after being sentenced in absentia in Italy for the 1977 abduction of Italian naval engineer Pietro Costa. He was awaiting extradition to Italy while under the supervision of the Argentine security ministry via the ankle monitor, which tracks both body temperature and movement.
He was initially detained in 2002 after crossing into Argentina from Chile using a fake passport. He subsequently obtained refugee status in 2004 and resided freely in the country until his rearrest in 2024 following the inauguration of right-wing President Javier Milei. At the time of the rearrest, Milei’s administration stated that Bertulazzi was responsible for offenses that undermined democratic values and numerous lives.
As a member of the Red Brigades, which was responsible for kidnapping and killing various state officials throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bertulazzi belonged to the Genoa branch. This faction abducted Pietro Costa on the street and detained him for 81 days before securing a substantial ransom.
Funds generated from that kidnapping financed an apartment in Rome. That same flat was utilized in 1978 for the notorious abduction and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Moro was captured after armed assailants ambushed his vehicle en route to parliament, held in the apartment for 54 days, shot, and left dead in the trunk of a Renault vehicle in central Rome.
