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France's Terror Tradition
France's left is outraged by plans to extradite a former red Brigade terrorist convicted of four murders.
Cesare Battisti was arrested in Paris last week and faces extradition proceedings. Battisti, who is now a novelist, arrived in France in 1990 from Mexico, where he had been hiding out since fleeing Italy in 1980. An Italian court later found him guilty of four murders and 60 robberies. He was sentenced to life in absentia.
The Red Brigades, along with their counterparts on the far right, terrorised Italy for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Following a crackdown on their activities - and some tough sentences handed down to terrorist leaders - many activists fled to France.
In 1985, the then Socialist president François Mitterrand allowed far-left terrorists to remain in France as long as they allowed police to keep an eye on them, renounced their past and stayed off the political scene.
Mitterand was responding to claims that many convictions in Italy during the late 1970s and early 80s were based purely on testimony from informers.
Shortly after Battisti's arrival in France in 1990, a court refused his extradition to Italy. However, France's current administration has declared that it will take a tougher line with terrorists: In 2002, France returned another Red Brigade member, Paolo Persichetti, who had been working as a political sociology teacher at a Paris university.
Persichetti's extradiction horrified France's left. Many saw his deportation as a gift from France's new centre-right government to Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who the left finds a great deal less palatable than the terrorists he has vowed to bring to justice.
Many commentators believed that Berlusconi's antics while Italy held EU presidency, not to mention his wholehearted support for America's invasion of Iraq, had angered France's president Chirac enough to prevent more extraditions.
Battisti's arrest - though his extradition is far from certain - confirmed the fears of many on France's left. Socialist Party spokesman Julien Drey told the Guardian
France offered judicial protection to these men and women... Not to respect that promise would be unworthy of France's traditions and an insult to our history.
Seems many in France are proud of France's tradition as a safe haven for terrorists.
