Italian former communist militant Cesare Battisti (C), wanted in Rome for four murders attributed to a far-left group in the 1970s, is escorted by Italian Police officers after stepping off a plane coming from Bolivia and chartered by Italian authorities,
Paris: Many far-left groups were active in Europe during a period of violent turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s that saw a spate of high-profile kidnappings and assassinations.
They included Italy's Armed Proletarians for Communism, a group that counted among its members Cesare Battisti who was arrested and returned to Italy Monday after decades on the run.
Here is a summary of other far-left armed groups across Europe during the 1970s and 1980s:
Italy
The Red Brigades were a leftwing terrorist organisation responsible for a string of attacks in Italy between 1969 and 1980.
Founded in 1973 by the sociologist Renato Curcio, the group injured or killed dozens of magistrates, political figures, journalists and industrialists.
Their most notorious act was the kidnapping and assassination of former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
A new formation known as the Red Brigades-PCC emerged in the 1990s and carried out assassinations of two government advisors in 1999 and 2002.
France
The Marxist left-wing Action Directe carried out a series of attacks that shook France in the 1980s, including the abduction and murder of Georges Besse, head of the state car manufacturer Renault, in 1986.
Founded in 1979, it targeted management, government and industrial premises. Initially, its attacks resulted in material damage, but then between 1983 and 1986 the group killed three police officers.
It disbanded in 1987 after the arrest of four of key members.
Germany
The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhof Group, after its founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, was a radical leftwing group.
It was responsible for a string of kidnappings and murders of prominent figures in West Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The outfit, founded in 1970, believed it was fighting an oppressive capitalist state and US imperialism.
Its highest-profile victim was Hanns Martin Schleyer, the head of the German employers' federation, who was kidnapped and shot dead in 1977.
Members of the group also assassinated senior diplomat Gerold von Braunmuehl in 1986, and the chairman of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, in 1989.
Believed to have killed a total of 34 people, the group abandoned violence in 1992 and formally disbanded in 1998.
Spain
Grapo, which stands for First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group, was founded in 1975 a few months before the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
A Marxist organisation which Spanish authorities blame for some 80 killings between 1975 and 2003, it targeted temporary-hire agencies in the belief they were creations of capitalist exploitation.
One of its deadliest attacks killed eight people in 1979 in a restaurant in Madrid. It also carried out a series of kidnappings.
In 2007 Spain announced it had dismantled the "last operational commando" after the arrest of six members in Barcelona.
Greece
Greece's deadliest terrorist outfit, November 17 was named after the date of a 1973 student uprising crushed by the military dictatorship then in power.
Emerging in 1975, the group killed 23 people -- including a CIA station chief, US army staff, Greek police, business executives and a British defence attache -- before being broken up in 2002.
