'Red Brigade' killers given life

Nadia Desdemona Lioce is already serving a life sentence

A court in Italy has jailed five suspected members of the Red Brigades in connection with the 2002 murder of a top government adviser.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Bologna had requested life sentences for four of the defendants, and 24 years' imprisonment for another.

The five were convicted over the killing of Marco Biagi, who had advised the government on labour reforms.

The Red Brigades-Communist Combatant Party claimed the killing.

It is an offshoot of the left-wing group that attacked government and business targets in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Shoot-out

The prosecutor had asked the court to convict and give life sentences to defendants Roberto Morandi, Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Diana Blefari Melazzi.

But a 24-year term had been requested for a fifth defendant, Simone Boccaccini, who the prosecutor said did not play a major part in Mr Biagi's killing.

Nadia Desdemona Lioce was arrested in 2003, after a shoot-out on a train, in which another suspect and a policeman were killed.

She is already serving a life sentence for that killing.

The original Red Brigades reached the peak of their notoriety in 1978 when they kidnapped and killed former Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

The group's new incarnation surfaced in 1999, when it claimed the killing of a first labour consultant, Massimo D'Antona, in Rome.

He was killed at a time when Italy was introducing reforms aimed at making the labour market more flexible.

The same gun was used in both Mr D'Antona and Mr Biagi's murders.