Leonardo Bertulazzi, ex-member of Italy’s radical far-left Red Brigades, fled in dramatic fashion, ‘like something out of a movie’
As dozens of police and sniffer dogs poured into San Telmo, a traditional Buenos Aires neighbourhood with cobblestone streets, on Tuesday morning, one of the clerks at a shop selling dulce de leche asked them why. He said they were “looking for a bomb”.
It was only later that she found out there was no danger of being blown up after all, and that authorities were, in fact, hunting for a fugitive. “An Italian mafioso, right?” she asked.
The escapee was no mobster, exactly: he was Leonardo Bertulazzi, 74, a former member of Italy’s radical far-left militant group the Red Brigades, who had been living under house arrest in Argentina after his arrest in 2024, awaiting extradition to Italy to serve a 27-year sentence.
On Tuesday, however, the 74-year-old escaped from house arrest in dramatic fashion.
“It was like something out of a movie,” said a person with knowledge of the investigation who asked to remain anonymous.
At around 6am, when most security forces “were focused on the Pope’s security” as the pontiff was visiting Argentina, Bertulazzi cut off his ankle monitor, the source said.
