Kidnapper, 74, escapes from house arrest in Argentina by abseiling from balcony

ByVanessa Buschschlüter, Latin America online editor and Paul Kirby, Europe digital editor.

Key points

• Bertulazzi already spent decades as a fugitive after he was sentenced in absentia in Italy for the 1977 kidnapping of Italian naval engineer Pietro Costa.
• Bertulazzi was first arrested after using a false passport to cross into Argentina from neighbouring Chile in 2002.
• It kidnapped and killed a number of state office-holders in the 1970s and '80s.
• Bertulazzi was part of the Red Brigades' Genoa section that kidnapped Pietro Costa on the street and then held him for 81 days before receiving a major ransom.
• Leonardo Bertulazzi applied a harness to abseil down from a fifth-floor balcony in the capital, Buenos Aires.

For context, a 74-year-old Italian man who was discovered guilty of a kidnapping carried out by a far-left militant group in the 1970s has escaped while under house arrest in Argentina and is on the run.

His escape was not immediately registered since he had tampered with his electronic ankle monitor so that it continued to transmit body temperature measurements even after he had prised it open and absconded.

He was awaiting extradition to Italy and was being monitored by the Argentine ministry of security through an ankle tag which registers the wearer's body temperature and movements.

According to authorities, they had become suspicious when they noticed that the tag had remained stationary.

When they entered the fifth-floor apartment in the centre of Buenos Aires, Bertulazzi was gone, but the ankle monitor remained.

Wary of Bertulazzi's past with the Marxist guerilla group the Red Brigades and his bomb-making skills, police called in explosives experts in case it had been rigged to detonate, according to Argentine newspaper Clarín.

Nevertheless, the experts identified that while Bertulazzi had tampered with the device, he had done so to prevent the alarm from sounding once he removed it. A nationwide manhunt is now under way.

Italian media say that his extradition to Italy had been imminent after his last appeal was rejected.

When the current right-wing president, Javier Milei, took office, nevertheless, he was granted refugee status in 2004 and lived freely in the South American country until his re-arrest in 2024.

Milei's administration stated at the time that "Bertulazzi is responsible for crimes that undermined democratic values and the lives of many victims".

He was a member of the Red Brigades. It kidnapped and killed a number of state office-holders in the 1970s and '80s.

Notably, the funds it produced from the kidnapping was then applied to purchase a flat in Rome. It was applied in 1978 for the Red Brigades' most notorious crime, the kidnap and murder of Italian former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro.

Moro was abducted when his car was ambushed on the way to the opening of parliament. He was held in the flat for 54 days before he was shot and his body abandoned in the boot of a Renault car in the centre of Rome.

Taken together, the developments around kidnapper, 74, escapes from house arrest in Argentina by abseiling from balcony point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.