Anna Laura Braghetti, a former Red Brigade member involved in the Moro kidnapping, has died.

Anna Laura Braghetti , a former member of the Red Brigades involved in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro , has died at 72. She was the jailer of the DC president (the apartment on Via Montalcini in Rome, considered one of the DC president's prisons, was registered in her name). She also murdered Vittorio Bachelet . She took part in the raid on the Christian Democratic Party headquarters in 1979: two officers died under fire from the Red Brigades.

She had been ill for about three months. Her double life, between terrorism and an office job, embodies a part of the 1970s. She authored two books: Il carcere (The Prisoner) , which was adapted into the film 'Buongiorno, notte' by Marco Bellocchio , and Nel cerchio della carcere ( In the Prison Circle), co-written with former NAR member Francesca Mambro . "Laura Braghetti left us her humanity and intelligence." The last years of her life "were for the invisible, the forgotten. In these 30 years, she gave hope to prisoners and former prisoners. To women and their children sheltering in shelters. Laura embodied and sowed hope," Mambro told LaPresse . In recent years, Braghetti has been involved in social work, with particular attention to prisoners and those in need.

Her family announced her passing: "Our dear Anna Laura has left us, surrounded by the love of her family and friends. The funeral will be held in the strictest confidence. Her community of loved ones." Her brother Gianluca Peciola , an activist and former city councilor, shared his thoughts on Facebook: "This world is too unequal," you said a few days ago, as the disease spread rapidly. "You were always thinking about solving other people's problems. Finding a safe place for those who had no protection. They will talk and write about you backwards. Where you haven't been for a long time. Because you were where humanity called. Goodbye Lalla, I love you."

Aldo Moro's jailer

The former militant of the Roman column of the Red Brigades was at the center of one of the most dramatic and symbolic chapters in Italian history: the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro. She was, in fact, the woman who rented and lived in the apartment on Via Montalcini in Rome, which served as the prison for the Christian Democratic leader during the 55 days of his kidnapping, from March 16 to May 9, 1978.

Born in Rome on August 3, 1953, a daughter of the city's lower middle class, Anna Laura Braghetti was working as a clerk when, in the early 1970s, she became involved with the extra-parliamentary left. Then, step by step, as she herself would recount years later, she joined the Red Brigades. "My decision to join an armed organization," she would later recount, "was the result of a long, slow courtship, a gradual rapprochement, like a mechanism that clicks into place, until the final moment when the machine is activated in full force."

In 1978, still without a criminal record, Braghetti was an active member of the Roman column of the terrorist group led by Mario Moretti . The apartment at Via Montalcini 8, in the Magliana neighborhood, where it is believed Moro was held prisoner throughout his kidnapping, was registered in her name. In that apartment, the young woman served as a front for the other Red Brigade members who rotated there: Germano Maccari —the so-called " engineer Altobelli "—and other members of the terrorist organization. Braghetti played the role of landlady, pretending to be Maccari's girlfriend, to divert any suspicions.

The raid on the DC headquarters

After the tragic conclusion of the kidnapping, with the killing of Moro on May 9, 1978, Braghetti went into hiding. From that moment on, he took an active part in some of the bloodiest actions of the Roman column of the Red Brigades. On May 3, 1979, during the raid on the Christian Democratic Party headquarters in Piazza Nicosia, he and Francesco Piccioni opened fire on a police car that had rushed to the scene: two officers , Antonio Mea and Piero Ollanu , died.

The Bachelet murder

A few months later, on February 12, 1980, Braghetti participated with Bruno Seghetti in the assassination of Vittorio Bachelet , vice president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, at La Sapienza University in Rome. She fired the first shot, fatally wounding the professor and former vice president of Catholic Action. That murder marked one of the high points of Red Brigades violence. Arrested on May 27, 1980, Braghetti was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1981, she married Prospero Gallinari , one of the historic leaders of the Red Brigades, in prison, from whom she later separated.

During his long detention, he never asked for benefits or a sentence reduction. Only in 2002, after twenty-two years in prison, was he granted parole.

Life after prison

In the following years, Braghetti devoted himself to intense social work, coordinating a service for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families. He thus sought to transform his past into a commitment to restitution and listening. His figure, long controversial, was often at the center of public debates on the themes of forgiveness, guilt, and change.

The books

She wrote two books: "Nel cerchio della carcere" (1995, Sperling & Kupfer), written with Francesca Mambro , a former member of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzione, and "Il carcere" (1998, Mondadori), in collaboration with journalist Paola Tavella . This last book, reprinted over the years by Feltrinelli, is considered a unique testimony to the experience of Moro's kidnapping. It recounts the daily life, human relationships, and tensions that marked those 55 days of forced cohabitation in the apartment on Via Montalcini. The book was loosely adapted into the film "Buongiorno, notte" by Marco Bellocchio , presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2003, in which the story was reworked in a symbolic and intimate way, portraying a young woman torn between ideology and conscience.

In recent years, Braghetti had chosen silence. He lived in Rome, away from the spotlight, dedicating himself to his volunteer work and maintaining a private profile. He had never completely renounced his past, but he had described it, in his writings and in his few public appearances, as a deep and irreparable wound. "I was looking for a way to change the world," he wrote, "and I tried to understand if the Red Brigades were the instrument to make the revolutionary dream come true. But that dream turned into a nightmare."

The reactions

Anna Laura Braghetti "is certainly not the Red Cross nurse who appeared in Bellocchio's film, but she is one of the central figures of the Red Brigades of the 1980s," Valter Biscotti , lawyer for the family of Moro's escort, told AGI, commenting on the news of the Red Brigades member's death. "She participated in the murder of Vittorio Bachelet and played a key role in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, because not only was she the registered owner of the apartment on Via Montalcini, but she was one of the three people who heard the DC president's voice inside the People's Prison. She and Prospero Gallinari were tasked with transcribing Moro's recordings," he recalls. And what happened to those tapes "remains a mystery," he concludes.