Updated

Leonardo Bertulazzi, a 74-year-old former Red Brigades member, escaped house arrest in Buenos Aires by abseiling from a fifth-floor balcony, BBC World reported. He was about to be extradited to Italy, his home country, when he fled. He had been found guilty of the 1977 kidnapping of Italian naval engineer Pietro Costa. Officials became suspicious when his ankle tag stayed stationary, but he had tampered with it so it kept sending body temperature readings after he removed it. When they entered his apartment he was gone and the tag remained. Police called in explosives experts, but they found the tampering was only meant to stop an alarm. A nationwide manhunt is under way, and the report gave no details of any recapture. Italian media said his extradition had been imminent after his last appeal was rejected. Bertulazzi had entered Argentina in 2002 on a false passport, was granted refugee status in 2004 and lived freely until his re-arrest in 2024 under President Javier Milei, whose government said he was responsible for crimes that undermined democratic values. The Red Brigades' Genoa section, which he belonged to, held Costa for 81 days for a ransom that later paid for a Rome flat used in the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro.