The Moro Affair: Interpretations and Consequences

Abstract

Aldo Moro, the President of the Christian Democratic Party (DC) and a former Prime Minister, was kidnapped by an armed gang on March 16, 1978, on the very morning when he was due to attend the parliamentary installation of a new Christian Democrat government, to be led by Giulio Andreotti and supported by the Italian Communist Party (PCI), a government that had emerged out of prolonged negotiations in which Moro had played the leading role. His kidnappers captured him in Rome’s Via Fani after a gun battle in which they killed all five of his bodyguards, two of whom were with him in his Fiat 130, while the other three were travelling in an Alfa Romeo immediately behind it. Four of his escorts were shot dead in less than a minute and the fifth man was mortally wounded, dying in a hospital within a few hours without regaining consciousness. Moro’s captivity lasted fifty-four days, although most authors refer to this period slightly inaccurately as “the fifty-five days.” Moro was shot dead on the morning of May 9, and his body was left in a red Renault in Via Caetani in central Rome, almost halfway between the headquarters of the Christian Democratic and Communist parties.