ABSTRACT
Most of the Red Brigadists were intelligent and young, some of them genuinely dedicated to ideals of brotherhood and justice; they had acquired at university the political skills of analysis, communication and persuasion, skills which should have enabled them to contribute more than most to influencing peaceful progress in society. Why did they throw these skills aside and turn instead to the gun, killing people in cold blood, often preceding the killing with the prolonged and excruciating mental torture of kidnapperhaps the most loathsome and inhuman of all man’s inhumanities to man?
