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.
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