Terrorist, 74, who ‘had a stroke’ abseils down 5 flooring in Hollywood-style escape
A notorious 74-year-old Italian terrorist staged an audacious abseiling escape from house arrest in Argentina while police were distracted by Pope Leo’s visit
Italian terrorist Leonardo Bertulazzi staged an audacious abseiling escape from house arrest(Image: Argentina’s Security Ministry/AFP via Getty Images)
An Italian terrorist is on the loose after exploiting the chaos of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Argentina to stage an audacious Hollywood-style breakout. Geriatric fugitive Leonardo Bertulazzi, 74, was just hours away from being bundled onto a plane back to Italy to serve a 27-year stretch when he gave cops the slip, prompting desperate officials to slap a 20 million peso (£10,000) bounty on his head.
With officers stretched thin policing millions of ecstatic worshippers lining the streets for the pontiff, the brazen pensioner executed an astonishing escape from house arrest, according to local reports.
Italian Interior Ministry undersecretary Wanda Ferro wasted no time pointing the finger at Buenos Aires on Tuesday, insisting it was down to Argentine cops to make sure he was handed over.
Bertulazzi used the chaos of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Argentina to stage the breakout(Image: DANIEL DAL ZENNARO/EPA/Shutterstock)
Speaking to broadcaster Tgcom24, she said: “I am certain that every effort will be made and that there will be appropriate dialogue to ensure – we hope – that he is brought back into custody and, above all, that extradition can take place very quickly if he is recaptured.”
Details of the OAP’s acrobatic getaway left law enforcement stunned. Bertulazzi first sliced off his electronic ankle tag before slathering it in grease and wrapping it in a thermal blanket to trick authorities into thinking it was still picking up his body heat and sweat.
He then busted out the climbing gear, using a harness and ropes to abseil down from his fifth-floor flat onto a neighbour’s second-floor terrace.
Bertulazzi cut off his electronic ankle tag before slathering it in grease(Image: AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Not done there, the agile fugitive scrambled down to a first-floor terrace, legged it across an empty plot of land and vaulted a gate to vanish into the streets.
A baffled investigator told Argentinian daily La Nación: “To think that he was under house arrest because, supposedly, he had suffered a stroke.”
Bertulazzi was a key player in the feared Red Brigades, a far-left terror outfit that brought Italy to its knees during the 1970s and 1980s with a bloody wave of murders and kidnappings.
Officials in Argentina say he operated out of the group’s Genoa cell and helped mastermind the 1978 abduction of former Italian PM Aldo Moro, who was later executed.
The slippery fugitive has been dodging Italian justice for decades. He was first collared in Argentina back in November 2002 on an Italian warrant, only for a judge to block his extradition the following year because he had been convicted in his absence.
He was handed refugee status in 2004, allowing him to live freely until hardline President Javier Milei swept to power in 2024.
Milei’s government stripped him of his protections and threw him back behind bars that August, prompting then-Security Minister Patricia Bullrich to boast online: “This dangerous criminal’s years of impunity are over. In this Argentina led by President Milei, those who commit crimes pay the price.”
