Antonio Savasta, a Red Brigade defector, has stated under interrogation that the Palestine Liberation Organization provided the Red Brigade with arms and explosives while officially condemning that Italian terrorist organization and disclaiming any connection with it.
According to Savosta, whose revelations were disclosed yesterday, the Red Brigade’s military chief, Mario Moretti, arrested in Milan last year, reached an accord with the PLO whereby the weapons smuggled into Italy would be split between Palestinians there and Red Brigade cells.
Savosta said he helped Moretti unload arms smuggled into Italy from Lebanon in 1979 and 1980 aboard a private yacht, the Popogo, owned by Dr. Massimo Gnidoni, a psychiatrist in Ancona.
Although other captured Red Brigade terrorists, such as Patrizio Peci, have implicated the PLO in the past, the widely held belief here has been that it was not the PLO but certain “extremist” groups, mainly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which supplied the Red Brigade with arms. The PLO propagated that notion and fervidly denied involvement with terrorists active in “friendly” European countries.
According to Savosta, Red Brigade members were angered by the PLO’s disavowals but Moretti kept them in line in order to continue the flow of arms from the PLO. Savosta also said that cooperation between the Red Brigade and the PLO was limited to “military” matters because the Red Brigade refused to accept the PLO’s position on Israel in its entirety.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
