Barbara Balzerani
Encyclopedia
Biography
Balzerani was born at ColleferroColleferro
Colleferro is a small town of the province of Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is a new residential zone of the metropolitan area of Rome where are located many different industries and a lot of sport structures....
, in the province of Frosinone
Province of Frosinone
The Province of Frosinone is a province in the Lazio region of Italy, with 91 comuni . Its capital is the city of Frosinone. It has an area of 3,244 km², and a total population of 489,042 .The Province was established by Royal Decree on 6 December 1926 with territories belonging to Lazio...
.
In the 1970s she became a leader of the Red Brigades
Red Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
(Italian Brigate Rosse, or BR, which she had joined in 1975) in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. She took part in several killings, such as that of Girolamo Minervini and the assassination of Aldo Moro's escort
Kidnapping of Aldo Moro
The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro was a seminal event in Italian political history.On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day in which the new cabinet led by Giulio Andreotti would undergo the confidence vote at the Italian Parliament, the car of Aldo Moro, former prime minister and then...
in Via Fani (1979). After the arrest of BR's national leader Mario Moretti
Mario Moretti
Mario Moretti is an Italian former terrorist. A leading member of the Red Brigades in the late 1970s, he was one of the kidnappers of Aldo Moro, president of Italy's largest party, Democrazia Cristiana, and several times premier, in 1978; he later confessed to have been the one who killed the...
in 1981, she unsuccessfully tried to handle the split in the organization, becoming a leader of the "Brigate Rosse - Partito Comunista Combattente", while Giovanni Senzani led the other faction, the "BR - Partito Guerriglia".
During the detention of Aldo Moro, she occupied, together with Moretti, the BR base in Via Gradoli in Rome. The base was discovered due to water leak, allegedly caused by a tap left open - although the circumstance of its discovery by Italian police forces were never totally cleared. In 1981 she participated in the abduction of US general James L. Dozier
James L. Dozier
James Lee Dozier is a retired US Army general officer. In December 1981, he was kidnapped by the leftist Italian Red Brigades Marxist terrorist group. He was rescued by Italian anti-terrorist forces after 42 days of captivity. General Dozier was the deputy Chief of Staff at NATO's Southern...
.
She was one of the last historical BR leader to be arrested, in 1985. From the prison, she claimed the assassination of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
's former mayor Lando Conti. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was paroled on 12 December 2006. She received complete freedom in 2011.
Balzerani wrote four books, Compagna luna (1998), La sirena delle cinque (2003), Perché io, perché non tu (2009) B and Cronaca di un'attesa (2011).