Two detained in Entre Ríos linked to escape of Italian terrorist Bertulazzi
Police arrested two suspects near the Fray Bentos crossing when they attempted to cross into Uruguay. Bertulazzi, a former member of the Red Brigades, has been on the run for three days.
Two alleged accomplices in Leonardo Bertulazzi's escape captured in Entre Ríos
The search for Leonardo Bertulazzi, the 74-year-old Italian terrorist who escaped from house arrest in San Telmo last Tuesday to avoid extradition to Italy, continues three days later without the fugitive having been captured, according to infobae.com.
The escape involved a device with pork meat and a blood pressure monitor to circumvent the electronic ankle monitor of the Federal Penitentiary Service. Bertulazzi, a former member of the Red Brigades, was convicted in absentia in Italy to 27 years in prison for the kidnapping of businessman Pietro Costa.
Detainees near the border crossing with Uruguay
The Entre Ríos DUOF and the Federal Police Argentina's Counter-Terrorism Investigation Unit arrested two people yesterday who are identified as accomplices of Bertulazzi in his escape. The detainees are Marcos Enrique González Rodríguez, of Uruguayan nationality, and Ethel Villalta de Rodríguez, a Salvadorean national identified as a former government official in her country.
Both were captured when attempting to cross into Uruguay at the Integrated Control Complex at the Fray Bentos crossing, near Gualeguaychú. The detention was carried out on the orders of judge María Romilda Servini, who has historically been in charge of Bertulazzi's extradition file.
A migration alert activated three days earlier by the same Counter-Terrorism Unit was what allowed them to be identified when their data was entered at the border post. The notification had been sent to the National Migration Directorate "so that control measures would be strengthened at land border crossings with the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, given the suspicion that they could cooperate with the fugitive Bertulazzi's border control evasion," said a source on the case.
Phones, pendrives and a car with Uruguayan licence plates
At the moment of arrest, the Federal police seized from González and Villalta six mobile phones, eight pendrives, two computers, documents in both their names and a Suzuki with Uruguayan licence plates. The two detainees were transferred to the Federal Police Superintendency of Federal Investigations in Villa Lugano and will be questioned in the coming days at the courts of Comodoro Py.
The official report to which infobae.com had access does not specify whether the couple is formally suspected of having assisted Bertulazzi in his escape. For investigators, however, the movement is at least suggestive: González and Villalta had already been previously identified as possible accomplices.
Investigators believe that Bertulazzi may have managed to cross into Uruguay, or that he at least attempted to, partly on the basis of the detainees' attempt to cross the same border crossing.
The couple and the raids
Following the escape, a series of raids were carried out on left-wing activists with whom Bertulazzi maintained links during his more than 20 years in Argentina. His partner, German national Bettina Köpcke, handed her mobile phone to the Federal Police.
A daughter of Bertulazzi gave interviews to Italian media outlets, including La Repubblica, in recent days. She stated that her father fled to avoid prison and that he was able to descend five storeys because he was "a mountaineer".
The legal case and the latest judicial move
Rodolfo Yanzón, Bertulazzi's lawyer, described the escape as "the desperate decision following a series of violations of essential rights, both by the government and the judicial system". Yanzón had fought for years over the revocation of the refugee status that Italy had granted two decades earlier, revoked during Javier Milei's administration in 2024, which resulted in his arrest and the confirmation of extradition by the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday 3 November, a week before the escape, Bertulazzi had filed a complaint with Secretariat No. 4 of the Supreme Court, after the Federal Administrative Contentious Court Chamber rejected the restoration of his refugee status in early October.
Among those who treated him when he arrived in the country at the beginning of the century, a phrase persists that Bertulazzi himself would repeat while seated at Comodoro Py: "My problem is political. It should have a political solution".
Source: Google News UY — Crime