There is anticipation for the decision of the French Court of Cassation which on Tuesday will rule on the extradition of the 10 former Italian red terrorists who have been refugees in Paris for years. In the last hearing, the Cassation Advocate General concluded for the rejection of the appeal of the Attorney General against the decision of the Court of Appeal which had denied the extradition of the ten former members of the armed struggle. And now, next March 28, the Supreme Court could definitively close this chapter of the years of lead. Unless, of course, he decides to refer the dossier again to a Court of Appeal, a technically possible hypothesis in any case.
The certain defenses of the groundlessness of the reasons for the appeal
The defense say they are certain of the groundlessness of the reasons for the appeal. “The reasons for the appeal raised by the Attorney General have no foundation”, underlined Irène Terrel, the French lawyer of seven of the ten former Italian terrorists, according to whom “the appeal must be rejected on the one hand because the proceeding in absentia as foreseen in Italy it violates article 6 and on the other hand because article 8 on the right to private and family life is violated, the fundamental principles established by the European Convention on Human Rights as stated by the Paris Court of Appeal” .
Who are the 10 former terrorists awaiting extradition to Italy
The extradition requests concern the ex of Lotta Continua, Giorgio Pietrostefani, one of the founders of the organization, eighty years old and ill for some time, sentenced to 22 years as one of the instigators of the murder of Commissioner Luigi Calabresi; six former militants of the Red Brigades: Giovanni Alimonti (born in ’55) who has yet to serve 11 years for an armed gang and terrorist association; Roberta Cappelli (born in ’55) who has a life sentence for association with terrorism, complicity in aggravated robbery, complicity in aggravated murder, attack on safety; Marina Petrella (born in ’54), who has to serve a life sentence for murder; Sergio Tornaghi (born in ’58), sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Renato Briano, general manager of Ercole Marelli; Maurizio Di Marzio (born in ’61), who has to serve 5 years for the attempted kidnapping of the former executive of the Digos in Rome, Nicola Simone; Enzo Calvitti (born in ’55), who must serve 18 years, 7 months and 25 days and 4 years of probation for the crimes of subversive association, armed gang, association for terrorist purposes, receiving weapons; the ex militant of Autonomia Operaia, Raffaele Ventura (born in ’52), sentenced to 20 years for moral complicity in the murder in Milan of the deputy brigadier Antonio Custra; the former militant of the Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), Luigi Bergamin (born in 1948), who has to serve a 25-year sentence for subversive association, armed gang and complicity in murder; the former member of the “Armed Nuclei against territorial power”, Narciso Manenti (born in ’57), who has a life sentence for the aggravated murder of the police officer Giuseppe Gurrieri, assassinated in Bergamo on 13 March 1979.
At the end of June 2022, the Attorney General had challenged before the Cassation the “no” to the extradition decided by the instruction chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal last June 29 for the 10 former Italian terrorists arrested as part of the “Red Shadows” operation ” of April 2021 in France and requested by Italy for acts of terrorism in the years 1970-80.
Macron’s weight
Italy’s extradition request was also welcomed by the French government and by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron who on 30 June 2022 had hoped that the former militants could be tried on Italian soil, announcing the appeal to the Cassation after the Court’s no of Appeal: «It is the respect we owe to the families of the victims and to the Italian nation» said the French Head of State, taking up the arguments that in April 2021 had led him to have the ten former Italian terrorists arrested. Macron reiterated the “political will to support the Italian government’s request for extradition, in accordance with what has always been France’s policy, i.e. to refuse extradition only to people not implicated in blood crimes. In this case, the people we are talking about have been implicated in blood crimes and therefore deserve to be tried on Italian soil”.
This position was desired in line with the so-called Mitterrand doctrine which had been introduced in France in the 1980s by the then French socialist president François Mitterrand and which in any case was never delimited and made concrete in any type of law.
The son of the former DC Iosa, shot in the legs in 1980: “I hope they pay for their faults, but I have no faith in France”
With regard to the decision of the French Court of Cassation, Cristian Iosa, son of Antonio Iosa, a former member of the DC who was shot in the knees by the Red Brigades in Milan on April 1, 1980, told beraking latest news: «I hope that the terrorists will be extradited and that justice be done, not out of a vengeful spirit but, precisely, out of a spirit of justice, because these people have never repented”.
Lorenzo Conti, son of the former mayor of Florence Lando Conti killed in 1986: “I no longer believe in anything”
“I no longer believe in anything. The problem is that there is no political will to let the truth emerge, a bit like with the state secret that has never really been released. Battisti was a case in itself, only he in Brazil, in France there is a hideout, there will be at least forty others around and I don’t know how much Macron wants to do something like this ». Lorenzo Conti, son of the former mayor of Florence Lando Conti, killed on 10 February 1986 by the Red Brigades, thus comments to beraking latest news on the possible extradition of ten terrorists which could be decided on 28 March by the Paris Court of Cassation. «Frankly, I no longer believe in it, after 40 years – he continues – but I sincerely hope so, I’m certainly not one who has pity for these terrorists, like the one who is crying today and going on hunger strike so as not to serve his sentence. the other victims were not given time to think, to choose. For me there is nothing left but prison and if it were a serious country it would be life imprisonment. I don’t even know what became of my father’s killers.’
The former Br, Paolo Persichetti on extradition: “It makes no sense”
And Paolo Persichetti expressed himself on the question of extradition, in the 80s in the Red Brigades-Union of Communists, the first (and only) ex-terrorist extradited to Italy from France. He commented to beraking latest news: «The Public Prosecutor’s Office had already expressed its opinion by rejecting the request for extradition, and it did so on the basis of a series of legally founded arguments. At a certain point, when there is an abnormal distance from the facts, punishment makes no sense, taking into account the fact that exile is not a walk in the park. It’s a precarious life, with a thousand problems, for which insertion then took decades».