Italian Terror Group Praises Sept. 11

An offshoot of the Red Brigades terror group claimed responsibility for the slaying of a government adviser Thursday and praised the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

An offshoot of the Red Brigades urban guerrilla movement published a 26-page Internet message on Thursday saying it had "executed" a top government adviser, a killing that has revived fears of terrorism in Italy.

Marco Biagi, 52, was shot dead on Tuesday night in the northern city of Bologna with the same pistol that the shadowy Red Brigades for the Construction of the Fighting Communist Party had used to kill another government aide in 1999.

The original Red Brigades were responsible for a slew of murders of politicians, businessmen and policemen in the late 1970s and 1980s. The group went dormant by the late 1980s.

Then, in 1999, an offshoot calling itself the Red Brigades for the Building of the Fighting Communist Party surfaced with a claim of responsibility for the killing of another economist working on labor reform, Massimo D'Antona.

D'Antona and Biagi both advocated measures to loosen Italy's labor market, one of the most rigid in Europe, by making it easier to fire workers.

The claim of responsibility was issued a day after Interior Minister Claudio Scajola publicly blamed the Red Brigades.

Biagi was the second economist working on labor reform to be gunned down in three years. The Red Brigades claimed it killed both men. Scajola said the same gun was used in both slayings.

The 26-page document was written in turgid political prose and was e-mailed to an independent regional news agency, Caserta 24 Ore, which posted it on its Web site Thursday.

The officer in charge of the case, Gen. Giampaolo Ganzer, head of the Carabinieri paramilitary police's anti-terror unit, was quoted as saying the claim appeared to be genuine.

The document attempts to portray Biagi's killing as part of a larger fight against what it calls "imperialism." It praised the Sept. 11 attacks, saying they show "how it is possible to carry out highly destructive attacks in enemy territory, with destabilizing effects, without the use of technologically advanced weapons."

The document specifically complained about U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq.