Mario Moretti was the leading figure of the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) in the years of its greatest violence. An Italian parliamentary commission describes him as the central figure in the 1978 kidnapping of Aldo Moro, a former prime minister and the president of the Christian Democrats, and says the operation was organized and run by a small nucleus of the group "led by Mario Moretti." On March 16, 1978 Moro was kidnapped in Rome and his five escort officers were killed. Moro himself was killed on May 9, 1978.
Moretti was arrested in the Milan area on April 4, 1981, after more than ten years underground. On January 25, 1983 a court in Rome sentenced him to life imprisonment (ergastolo) in the first Moro trial, one of 32 life sentences handed down that day. His total has since been given as six life sentences. In 1993 he stated that he had been the material executor of the murder of Moro. He has never repented or dissociated himself from the group, and he has made no statements in the recent Cascina Spiotta proceedings.
In December 1997 a court in Milan authorized a semi-liberty regime, under which he could work outside during the day and had to return at night. That status was still in place in February 2023. On July 7, 2026 the Corte d'Assise of Alessandria recognized him, together with the co-founder of the group, Renato Curcio, as liable in the death of a carabiniere in 1975, and declared the offense prescribed, so that no sentence was imposed.
The Red Brigades were founded in 1970 and took their first steps in the factories of Milan. Moretti, a technician by trade, came to the group in its early years; his own circle joined the organization in 1971. The early actions were directed at factory managers and were mostly demonstrative. The group's first fatal attack came in June 1974, and over the following years it turned to kidnappings and killings.
The early leaders were Renato Curcio, Margherita Cagol and Alberto Franceschini. Curcio and Franceschini were arrested together on September 8, 1974, and Moretti was not among those taken. His escape raised some suspicion of betrayal inside the group. He was then given the task of starting a new column in Rome. In early 1975 he took part, with Cagol, in the freeing of Curcio from detention. Cagol died in June 1975 and Curcio was arrested again in January 1976, and Moretti's weight in the organization grew. A new executive committee of four, formed by Moretti with Rocco Micaletto, Franco Bonisoli and Lauro Azzolini, came to direct the group. Moretti led its work in Rome and sat on the leadership of the Rome column, which he was assigned to head in 1976 and 1977.
He was not the subject of any judicial inquiry before the Moro case.
Aldo Moro was the president of the Christian Democrats. He had served as prime minister from 1963 to 1968 and again from 1974 to 1976, and had been the party's secretary from 1959 to 1964. In 1978 he supported the "historic compromise," a proposed arrangement between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party, which the Red Brigades opposed.
On March 16, 1978 Moro was kidnapped in Rome and five members of his escort were killed. They were Oreste Leonardi, a marshal of the carabinieri and the head of the escort; Domenico Ricci, a carabinieri corporal; and three police officers, Francesco Zizzi, Giulio Rivera and Raffaele Iozzino. Moretti was then 31 and a full-time member of the group and of its four-person executive committee.
The government refused to negotiate for Moro's release. He was killed on May 9, 1978.
Moretti remained at large for three years, and was Italy's most wanted man. On April 4, 1981 the Milan anti-terrorism police arrested him in the Milan area. He was 35. He declared himself a political prisoner. Police named him as the suspected organizer of the kidnapping and murder of Moro and as wanted over other attacks in Rome.
The arrest came as the group was breaking up. Arrests had risen sharply from 1980, and a growing number of members were cooperating with the authorities.
The first Moro trial in Rome ran for about nine months, with some 100 hearings and 298 witnesses. It was the largest trial of terrorists in Italy up to that time, and it was held under heavy guard. The verdict was announced on January 25, 1983. Fifty-nine defendants were found guilty and four were acquitted. Thirty-two received life sentences, and the others received terms of between four months and 30 years. The sentences were lighter than the prosecutor had requested overall; for the group of defendants that included Moretti, he had asked for life sentences on all 11 counts. The verdicts covered the murder of Moro and 16 other murders. Moretti, then 36, was among those given life imprisonment.
The appeal court in Rome gave its ruling in the Moro case on March 14, 1985, with its reasons published that June. In its reasoning the court described Moretti as a member of the executive committee that decided on the operation, as the person in charge of the committee in Rome and as a member of the leadership of the Rome column, which prepared and carried out the kidnapping.
Moretti spent the 1980s in custody. By the late 1980s imprisoned leaders of the group, including Curcio and Moretti, had declared the armed struggle over. In 1994 a magazine reviewing a book of interviews with him, conducted by two Italian writers, described him as 47 years old and in the thirteenth year of a life sentence. He accepts full responsibility for the operation.
In 1993, twelve years after his arrest, he stated that he was the material executor of the murder of Aldo Moro. The statement is described as a confession.
In December 1997 a court in Milan authorized an open regime for Moretti. By then he had been in custody for about 16 years and was 49. Under the decision he could work outside during the day and had to return at night. He was the last member of the group that carried out the Moro kidnapping to leave full custody. The judges noted that "a number of doubts remain" about the case and that there was "no certain proof" that Moretti knew the answers to the remaining questions. They also noted his acknowledgment of the group's failure.
Moretti told the press that no mysteries existed and that there had been "no one behind" the group.
He remained in the regime. In February 2022 he was working at a rehabilitation center for former prisoners. In early 2023 the supervision court allowed him to spend the New Year period outside the facility, in Lombardy, and from January 4, 2023 he was permitted to work remotely for a local association and a care facility in the same area. When not on a reward leave he left the facility in the morning and returned at night. Semi-liberty is not full release, and he has shown no sign of repentance.
On June 4, 1975 the Red Brigades kidnapped an industrialist. The next day carabinieri reached Cascina Spiotta, in the Alessandria area. The carabiniere Giovanni D'Alfonso died there, and so did Margherita Cagol, a founder of the Red Brigades. The industrialist was freed unharmed.
The case was reopened decades later after a complaint by the victim's family to the Turin prosecutor's office. Lauro Azzolini, who had been cleared in 1987, was identified in 2021 on new evidence. On October 30, 2024 the preliminary hearing judge in Turin, Ombretta Vanini, sent Azzolini, Curcio and Moretti to trial; a fourth suspect, whose offenses had lapsed, was dismissed from the case because of the time bar. The trial began before the Corte d'Assise of Alessandria in February 2025.
The prosecutor, Emilio Gatti, argued on June 19, 2026 that Moretti and Curcio bore moral complicity (concorso morale) in the death of D'Alfonso, and asked for life imprisonment for each of them, saying he could not propose mitigating circumstances. For Azzolini he asked for 21 years.
On July 7, 2026 the court gave its verdict. Azzolini was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, in continuation with an earlier conviction, with a provisional award of 40,000 euros to D'Alfonso's family. For Curcio and Moretti the court did not accept the prosecution's theory of moral complicity. It recognized "concorso in reato diverso da quello voluto," complicity in a crime different from the one intended, under which a participant can be held liable for a more serious result than the one he meant. The judges found that D'Alfonso's death was a foreseeable consequence of the kidnapping for extortion, not something the two men intended. That offense had already lapsed through prescription, so no sentence was imposed. Moretti's lawyer, Francesco Romeo, said that the ruling undermined the prosecution's case and that there were grounds for a full acquittal.
Italy has no death penalty. The terrorism cases of the late 1970s and early 1980s were tried in very large proceedings. A law that gave reduced sentences to defendants who cooperated with the police, in force until January 31, 1983, was central to many of them, and a later dissociation law let defendants break with terrorism formally; Franceschini, for one, signed such a declaration on February 21, 1987 and was granted semi-liberty the next year. Moretti did not dissociate. In his case semi-liberty and reward leaves were granted despite the life sentences.
Prescription (prescrizione) ends a prosecution once a period equal to the maximum penalty has passed since the offense. That rule is why a death of 1975 could be tried in 2025 and 2026 and still end without a sentence for Moretti and Curcio.
The Moro case itself was examined by a parliamentary commission, whose third report in December 2017 described its own work as not exhaustive and identified several lines of inquiry that it said deserved further investigation.
The parliamentary commission examined suspicions that Moretti had been an informant. Curcio had held such a suspicion, and an internal inquiry of the group cleared him. The commission said that nothing authorized it to affirm that he was an infiltrator or a spy, though it asked for further inquiry into several circumstances. Later theories describing him as an infiltrator are speculation and have not been confirmed by any court.
1970: The Red Brigades are founded in Milan.
September 8, 1974: Curcio and Franceschini are arrested; Moretti is not.
Early 1975: Curcio is freed from detention by a group that includes Moretti and Cagol.
June 5, 1975: A carabiniere, Giovanni D'Alfonso, and Margherita Cagol die at Cascina Spiotta.
1976 to 1977: Moretti directs the Rome column.
March 16, 1978: Aldo Moro is kidnapped in Rome and five escort officers are killed.
May 9, 1978: Aldo Moro is killed.
April 4, 1981: Moretti is arrested in the Milan area.
January 25, 1983: A court in Rome sentences Moretti to life imprisonment in the first Moro trial.
March 14, 1985: The Rome appeal court rules on the first Moro trial.
1993: Moretti states that he was the material executor of the murder of Moro.
December 1997: A Milan court authorizes semi-liberty.
February 2023: Moretti is still in semi-liberty, working remotely for a local association and a care facility.
October 30, 2024: Moretti and Curcio are sent to trial over the Cascina Spiotta death.
June 19, 2026: The prosecutor asks for life imprisonment for Moretti and Curcio.
July 7, 2026: The court in Alessandria declares the offense prescribed for Moretti and Curcio.