Italy communists jailed for life

Mezzasalma, Morandi and Lioce got life for the D'Antona murder

Three members of the militant communist Red Brigades group have been given life sentences over the murder of an Italian government adviser in Rome in 1999.

Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Marco Mezzasalma and Roberto Morandi were convicted of killing Massimo D'Antona near his home.

The Red Brigades-Communist Combatant Party, an offshoot of the group that carried out deadly bombings in the 1970s and 1980s, claimed the killing.

The three defendants had already been jailed for life.

They were sentenced in June - along with two other alleged Red Brigades members - for the murder of another government adviser, Marco Biagi, in the northern city of Bologna in March 2002.

'New' Red Brigades

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 Mr D'Antona, a 51-year-old law professor and senior aide to a former labour minister.

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.