Italy and Europe.

The objectives of Italy's original Marxist-Leninist radical group, the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades) included the promotion of class warfare and engaging in violent activities to establish a communist state. The New Red Brigades, a successor to the original, reiterated these goals with attacks conducted as recently as 2003. The group opposed the U.S. presence in Europe as well as the presence of NATO forces in Italy.

Fewer than 100 active members.

The Red Brigades reportedly have obtained weapons from abroad. Other than that, support from sources outside of Italy appears to be minimal. Some Red Brigades members have managed to find temporary sanctuary in France and Argentina.

The original Red Brigades group concentrated on the kidnapping and assassination of Italian government and business leaders. The usual pattern was to shoot victims as they traveled to work. The group is suspected of being involved in as many as 14,000 incidents. Imprisoned members of the original Red Brigades disavowed violence in a 1994 statement, but a derivative faction, the New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party (BR/PCC), later resumed violent activities, including two murders in 1999 and 2002. The latter group is suspected of financing itself in part through armed robberies.

The Red Brigades group, founded in 1970, espoused rigidly Marxist-Leninist principles. The radical leftist group advocated violence in the pursuit of class warfare. The group targeted businessmen and politicians and became a significant terrorist threat in Italy during the 1970s and early 1980s. The group assumed some qualities of anarchist groups while still adhering to an aggressive and violent pro-communist philosophy. However, the group's increasingly brutal attacks eventually eroded the support of others sympathetic to Communism.

The decline of communism after the end of the Cold War also led to diminishing support. In April 1984, four imprisoned Red Brigades leaders issued a statement that proclaimed further armed combat as futile, noting that: "The international conditions that made this struggle possible no longer exist." The original Red Brigades essentially ceased to exist with the issuance of the statement. However, the legacy of the organization continued.

Many of the original Red Brigades members fled to France in 1985, benefiting from a policy started by former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand -- the so-called Mitterrand doctrine -- that allowed Italian leftist activists to stay if they renounced their extremist past. Italy fought for the extradition of many former members, as well as other leftist radicals, but France refused to do so until the 2000s. The Mitterrand doctrine ended in 2005, though some extraditions were authorized before that.

Following the release of the 1984 letter, two factions broke off from the founding organization. One was the New Red Brigades/Communist Combatant Party (BR/PCC) and the second was the Red Brigades/Union of Combatant Communists (BR/UCC). The BR/PCC specifically chose to continue in the ideological and violent path of the original Red Brigades. The group reportedly reinforces its strength by cooperating with other Italian leftist organizations such as the Anti-Imperialist Nuclei and the Nuclei of the Proletarian Revolution.

The newer group has engaged in sporadic violent acts, reminiscent of the original Red Brigades and has taken responsibility for the murder of two Italian Labor Ministry advisers, one in 1999 and the other in 2002. Each of the officials was pursuing labor market reforms opposed by unions.

Italian security forces discovered a cache of Red Brigades weapons in 2003. The group has been cited for killing a policeman in 2003. Italian police have remained active in pursuing members of the Red Brigades, with the most recent arrests occurring during February 2007 raids across northern Italy. Those raids netted 15 members and allegedly averted a major attack.

Also in 2002, Paris extradited Paolo Persichetti, a former Red Brigades member wanted for murder, in the first departure from the Mitterrand doctrine.

October: In Florence, Italian security forces arrested eight persons allegedly connected to the Red Brigades.

December: Italian policed uncovered a cache of explosives during a raid on the house of a member of the Red Brigades in Rome. Authorities also recovered documents related to group operations. Police said the discovery essentially crippled the ability of the group to conduct additional activities. News reports of the incident indicated that Italian security forces were still seeking the apprehension of about 140 former members of the Red Brigades at large in Italy and France.

Oct. 1: Cristoforo Piancone, a former Red Brigades leader, was arrested in Siena robbing a bank. He was serving a life sentence for multiple murders but was out on a work release.