Milei Strips Refugee Status; 74-Year-Old Slips the Leash

A 74-year-old man lowered himself from a fifth-floor apartment on a harness and rope, and now two states are hunting him. Leonardo Bertulazzi, a former member of Italy's far-left Red Brigades, escaped house arrest in Argentina on Tuesday and was still on the run Wednesday, Argentine police officials told The Associated Press. A nationwide search is under way. The Security Ministry has put a price on his head: 20 million pesos, about $13,000, for information leading to his capture.

The Paper Trail of a Refugee

The sequence is worth reading slowly. Bertulazzi was first arrested in Buenos Aires in November 2002, 24 years ago. In 2003, an Argentine judge rejected Italy's extradition request because Italian law did not guarantee him a new trial after a conviction in absentia. Rome's own legal system, in other words, couldn't meet the standard an Argentine court set. In 2004, he was granted refugee status.

That status held for two decades. Then, under right-wing President Javier Milei, Argentina revoked it in 2024 and re-arrested him that August. Its Supreme Court approved his extradition last year. Refuge, it turns out, lasts exactly as long as the next government allows. A person's protection can be withdrawn by a change of administration, with the same paperwork and a different signature.

He faces a combined 27-year sentence from Italian courts, which convicted him in the 1980s of what the article calls "terrorism-related" crimes. Those convictions came in absentia. Argentine authorities say he belonged to the Red Brigades' Genoa branch and was involved in the logistics of the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, 48 years ago.

Two Governments, One Leash

By Argentine police accounts, the escape was improvised and low-tech. He descended onto the second-floor terrace of a neighbouring house, climbed down to a first-floor terrace, crossed a vacant lot and got onto the street by climbing over a gate. Nobody noticed at first. Officials say he tampered with his electronic ankle monitor, placing it inside a device containing a thermal blanket to maintain its temperature, along with grease or animal fat, apparently to keep moisture in. Explosives specialists examined the device, which had been made to resemble an explosive.

So a surveillance gadget meant to keep a 74-year-old in his flat was defeated by a blanket and some fat, and the state's first response was to call the bomb squad.

Rome, meanwhile, is already pointing across the Atlantic. Wanda Ferro, an undersecretary in Italy's Interior Ministry, said Argentine police were responsible for ensuring he was handed over. "I am certain that every effort will be made," she told local television, adding that she hoped the extradition could take place "very quickly" if Bertulazzi is recaptured. The if is doing a lot of work there.

Who Decides Where a Person May Live

Strip away the Red Brigades history and the mechanics are familiar to anyone who has watched a deportation case: a person is granted protection, the protection is withdrawn when politics shift, and an ankle tag and a police cordon enforce the new decision. Two governments, one in Buenos Aires and one in Rome, are now cooperating on a single task, which is moving one old man from one side of an ocean to a cell on the other. A bounty turns every neighbour into an informant.

The article gives no word from Bertulazzi himself, and none from anyone who has sheltered or supported him. What it does record is the full apparatus lined up against him: a reward, a nationwide search, explosives specialists, an interior ministry official promising speed. For a man who climbed down five floors on a rope, that is a great deal of state.