Kidnapper, 74, escapes from house arrest in Argentina by abseiling from balcony

Leonardo Bertulazzi, a 74-year-old former member of Italy's Red Brigades, escaped from house arrest in Buenos Aires and is now on the run, Argentina's security ministry confirmed on Wednesday, according to Yahoo. The ministry offered a $13,000 reward for information leading to his recapture.

Bertulazzi was held under house arrest in the Argentine capital while awaiting extradition to Italy to serve a 27-year prison sentence. Yahoo reported that Argentina approved his extradition in July 2025 after the Supreme Court rejected a final appeal, and BBC reported that Italian media said the extradition had been imminent after his last appeal was rejected.

The BBC reported that Bertulazzi used a harness to abseil down from a fifth-floor balcony. Yahoo said local press described the escape in detail but that authorities had not confirmed the veracity of those reports, and that he reportedly used a harness to lower himself from the balcony. Police noticed his ankle monitor had stopped transmitting movement data and went to the house, where they found the device discarded and Bertulazzi missing, Yahoo said.

BBC reported that the escape was not immediately registered because Bertulazzi had tampered with his electronic ankle monitor so that it continued to transmit body temperature measurements after he had prised it open and absconded. Officials became suspicious when they noticed the tag had remained stationary. When officers entered the fifth-floor apartment in the centre of Buenos Aires, Bertulazzi was gone but the monitor remained.

Police called in explosives experts in case the device had been rigged to detonate, given Bertulazzi's past with the Red Brigades and his bomb-making skills, BBC reported, citing the Argentine newspaper Clarín. The experts found that he had tampered with the device to prevent the alarm from sounding once he removed it.

Bertulazzi was sentenced in absentia in Italy in 1987 for the 1977 kidnapping of Italian naval engineer Pietro Costa, Yahoo reported, adding that he received the sentence for joining a subversive association and belonging to an armed group. BBC reported that he was part of the Red Brigades' Genoa section, which kidnapped Costa on the street and held him for 81 days before receiving a big ransom. The money was then used to buy a flat in Rome, used in 1978 for the group's most notorious crime, the kidnap and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro.

BBC reported that Moro was abducted when his car was ambushed on the way to the opening of parliament, held in the flat for 54 days, then shot, with his body abandoned in the boot of a Renault car in central Rome. Yahoo described the Red Brigades as a radical Marxist organization responsible for attacks between 1969 and 1980, dubbed Italy's "Years of Lead."

Bertulazzi was first arrested by Argentine authorities in 2002 after entering the country from neighbouring Chile with a false passport, BBC reported. Yahoo said he was freed a few months later and secured refugee status in 2004, living freely until his rearrest in 2024 after that status was revoked. BBC noted that his rearrest came when President Javier Milei took office, and quoted his government as saying: "Bertulazzi is responsible for crimes that undermined democratic values and the lives of many victims."