House OKs motion to help France terror victims relatives

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 24 - The Lower House on Wednesday unanimously approved a majority motion committing the government to help the relatives of the victims of 10 former leftist terrorists whose extradition France has refused in their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights to try to get the French Cassation Court's recent ruling overturned.
    The motion commits the government to take "all initiatives aimed at furnishing all the necessary and due assistance to the relatives of the victims of crimes committed by the 10 terrorists who have take refuge in France in their announced intention of appealing to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against the decision of the French Court of Cassation".
    There was cross-party support for providing all possible assistance to the relatives.
    MP Riccardo De Corato of Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party called the Mittterand Doctrine giving a haven to former Italian terrorists, which had been thought to have ended before the Cassation ruling appeared to revive it, "shameful".
    Andrea Orsini of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party said the French judges had "injured the concept of justice".
    There was outrage in Italy in March after France's supreme Court of Cassation confirmed a lower court's refusal to extradite 10 former leftist terrorists, mostly ex- members of the Red Brigades (BR) group which dominated Italy's Years of Lead of social turmoil and leftist and rightist political violence from the late 1960s to the mid 80s.
    The high court upheld a lower court's ruling on June 29 last year denying extradition for eight men including Giorgio Pietrostefani, a Lotta Continua (Constant Struggle) leader sentenced to life for his part in the murder of Milan police chief Luigi Calabresi on May 17, 1972, and two women including former BR members Marina Petrella and Roberta Cappelli.
    The Parisian prosecutor general's office had appealed to the Cassation Court against the lower court's decision to refuse Italy's extradition request for the 10 former leftist terrorists who had taken refuge in France.
    French President Emmanuel Macron had said the ex-BR members and the others should be judged in Italy. (ANSA).