Key facts
- Argentina's security ministry offered a $13,000 reward for information leading to Leonardo Bertulazzi's recapture.
- Bertulazzi, 74, had been under house arrest in Buenos Aires since 2024 ahead of extradition to Italy.
- Italy sentenced Bertulazzi in 1987 to 27 years in prison for joining a subversive association.
- Police found Bertulazzi's ankle monitor discarded after it stopped transmitting movement data, the security ministry said.
- Argentina approved Bertulazzi's extradition in July 2025 after the supreme court rejected a final appeal.
Argentina's security ministry said on Wednesday that Leonardo Bertulazzi, a 74-year-old former member of Italy's radical Marxist Red Brigades, escaped from house arrest in Buenos Aires and offered a $13,000 reward for information leading to his recapture.
Bertulazzi had been placed under house arrest in the capital in 2024, ahead of an extradition to Italy to serve a 27-year prison sentence imposed in 1987 for joining a subversive association and belonging to an armed group. Argentina approved his extradition in July 2025 after the country's supreme court rejected a final appeal.
According to the security ministry, police went to the residence after noticing that Bertulazzi's ankle monitor had stopped transmitting movement data. They found the device discarded and Bertulazzi gone.
Local press reported that he used a harness to lower himself from a fifth-floor balcony, but authorities have not confirmed the accuracy of those accounts.
Bertulazzi was first arrested by Argentine authorities in 2002 after years on the run, freed a few months later and granted refugee status in 2004. That status was revoked before his 2024 arrest.
The Red Brigades were a radical Marxist organization responsible for attacks between 1969 and 1980, a period known in Italy as the "Years of Lead." The group's most notorious act was the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former prime minister Aldo Moro.