Leonardo Bertulazzi, Awaiting Extradition to Italy, Escapes House Arrest in Argentina
Leonardo Bertulazzi, 74, has escaped while under house arrest in Argentina, and a nationwide manhunt for him is under way. He was awaiting extradition to Italy, the formal transfer of a person to another country to face charges, at the time he disappeared.
According to the BBC, Bertulazzi used a harness to lower himself from a fifth-floor balcony in Buenos Aires. He also tampered with his electronic ankle monitor, a device worn by people under court supervision, so that it kept sending body temperature readings after he had removed it.
Argentine officials became suspicious when the tag stopped moving. They found him gone and the monitor left behind in his apartment in central Buenos Aires.
Bertulazzi was sentenced in his absence in Italy over the 1977 kidnapping of Pietro Costa, an Italian naval engineer. He was part of the Genoa section of the Red Brigades, an Italian armed group, which held Costa for 81 days before receiving a ransom, the payment demanded for his release. The ransom money was used to buy a flat in Rome, which the Red Brigades used in 1978 for the kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.
Bertulazzi's path to Argentina began in 2002, when he was first arrested after using a false passport to cross into the country from Chile. In 2004 he was granted refugee status in Argentina, and he lived freely there until he was re-arrested in 2024.
