Antonio Savasta, on trial for the murder of former Premier Aldo Moro and other criminal acts, has given Italian authorities details of Palestine Liberation Organization collaboration with the Red Brigade in Italy, including extensive weapons supplies.
According to Savasta, who confessed that he gave the orders to kill Moro, the PLO delivers arms to the Red Brigade for their own use and to be stored for PLO terrorist acts on Italian soil. He said a weapons shipment handed over in Cyprus included ground-to-air missiles, machine guns and bombs of various types. Another shipment smuggled into Italy from France contained Kalachnikov automatic rifles, hand grenades and guns.
Savasta claimed the PLO has two arms caches in Italy, one in Mondello and the other in Sardegna. Both were subsequently discovered by police. The terrorist reportedly told his interrogators:
“The reasons behind this relationship (between the PLO and the Red Brigade) were that the PLO, despite the fact that (Yasir) Arafat has relations with national states, was also interested in attacks on a military level in Europe against Zionist embassies and political and military personnel. It was in relation to this request that the Red Brigade began an investigation of the military attache of the government of Tel Aviv in Rome.”
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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.
