ROME (voa) – Italy says the Red Brigades terrorist group appears to be responsible for the killing of a top government advisor.
Interior Minister Claudio Scajola cites police tests that show the gun used against economist Marco Biagi on Tuesday was the same one used to kill another government adviser in 1999.
The Red Brigades claimed responsibility for that earlier killing in addition to Mr. Biagi’s murder. The left-wing group, which waged a campaign of political violence across Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, claimed responsibility for the Biagi murder in an anonymous phone call to a Bolonga newspaper Wednesday.
The U.S. State Department has called the economic adviser’s murder an “outrageous terrorist act.”
At the time of his death, Mr. Biagi was pushing for controversial labor law reforms that would make it easier for companies to fire workers.
Interior Minister Claudio Scajola, who cut short a visit to the United States after the attack, termed the assassination an assault on democracy. He called it is proof of a persisten terrorist sub-culture in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi denounced the shooting as terrorism and called on labor unions to renew talks with the government on the proposed labor law changes.
Thousands of Italian trade union members took part in protests against the killing on Wednesday. But leaders of the country’s three main labor organizations reaffirmed their plans for a nationwide general strike next month to protest the proposed labor reforms.
