The spectre of urban terrorism returned to Italy yesterday after the arrest of 15 suspected Red Brigades terrorists, said to be planning to kidnap or assassinate Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon and former Prime Minister, and other targets.

The leaders of the alleged plot are middle-aged men thought to be nostalgic for the armed struggle against the State in the 1970s. Milan Magistrates questioned the suspects, who include respectable members of the General Confederation of Italian Workers (CGIL), Italy’s biggest trade union.

Guglielmo Epifani, the CGIL leader, said he was “deeply alarmed” that the ringleaders had been joined by five alleged accomplices aged under 30.

Prosecutors allege that the militants — who claim ideological descent from the Red Brigades terrorists who conducted a campaign of murder and kidnapping known as The Years of Lead — were planning to attack Mr Berlusconi.

Sky television news, Libero, the right-wing newspaper, ENI, Italy’s largest oil company, and Pietro Ichino, an economics professor who is a government consultant on labour reform and writes for Corriere della Sera, were named as other potential targets.

Extreme left-wingers from the “New Red Brigades” have twice murdered economists advising the Government: Massimo D’Antona in 1999, and Marco Biagi in 2002. They accuse Italy’s social democrats — many of them former communists — of selling out and betraying the class struggle. The present centre-left Government of Romano Prodi includes communists and former communists.

Ilda Boccassini, the Milan prosecutor, said: “We have prevented dangerous people, who felt at war against the State, from carrying out violent attacks.” Police said that the suspects, who had been under surveillance for months, had carried out target practice in the countryside near Rovigo. Mrs Boccassini said that they planned to kidnap their victims for ransom or to kneecap and possibly murder them.

The leader of the alleged plot was identified as Alfredo Davanzo, 50, a left-wing activist convicted for robbery who escaped to France but returned recently to Italy. He was said to have told officers who arrested him at a hideout near Udine that he considered himself a political prisoner. The former Red Brigades campaign culminated in the kidnapping and murder in 1978 of Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic leader, who had planned a “historic compromise” bringing the Italian Communist Party at the time into government. The latest crackdown focused on Milan, Turin and Padua.

Professor Ichino said: “You have to go on, continue to write, otherwise they win, intimidation wins”. Giuliano Amato, the Interior Minister, said the group was “a structured and highly dangerous organisation — but we know it is not the last”.

Police said that as well as Mr Davanzo, the group’s leaders included Salvatore Scivoli, 54, its alleged armourer, and Vincenzo Sisi, 53, a CGIL official in Turin.

Years of Lead

March 1978 Red Brigades kidnap and murder former Prime Minister Aldo Moro

December 1981 US General James Dozier kidnapped by Red Brigades and rescued 42 days later

February 1986 Red Brigades kill Lando Conti, former Mayor of Florence

March 1987 General Licio Giorgieri killed by Red Brigades’ attack in Rome

April 1988 Roberto Ruffilli, an Italian Senator, murdered by the Red Brigades

Source: Times archives

Times Recommends

• Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
• 'Delayed justice' fear for OJ Simpson
• Sex and the sari