Word: petrella
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Margherita Boniver, an Italian Member of Parliament and longtime foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, chastised the "French radical-chic" efforts to block extradition. "The fact that Carla Bruni [helped] Petrella avoid extradition to Italy is something grave," adding there appeared to be "a sort of convergence" with the Battisti case. "It's all unprecedented," Boniver told reporters...
...France under a special amnesty law signed by then-President Francois Mitterrand in the wake of Italy's so-called "Years of Lead" violence in the 1970s and 1980s. Bruni admitted in October that she and her older sister had urged Sarkozy to block the scheduled extradition of Marina Petrella, who was suffering from severe depression and weight loss. Sarkozy, who'd come to office vowing to force the return of convicted Italian terrorists, reversed his earlier decision, and blocked the extradition to Italy. While his wife was pleased and most of France barely noticed, many in Italy were outraged...
...Evidence that the support the Bruni sisters added - aided by wider French public opinion sympathetic to Petrella's cause - had begun softening Sarkozy's position became clear as the summer advanced. Even as he wrote Italian authorities in July promising to deliver Petrella once her French administrative appeals had been exhausted, Sarkozy urged clemency in light of the prisoner's perilous health - a suggestion swiftly rebuffed by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome. Less than a month later, a French appeals court ordered Petrella's release from custody at the request of French justice officials...
...lack of public sympathy in Italy for Petrella's clearly critical health condition may strike some observers as tough. But it becomes more understandable against the broader history of Red Brigades fugitives enjoying refuge in France despite long-standing extradition treaties between the countries. France's official tolerance resulted from a deal that former Socialist President François Mitterrand extended in 1985 to Italy's left-wing terrorists: if they renounced violence, they could live in France under open-ended amnesty. Scores of former terrorists did just that, living openly and unmolested - much to the ire of authorities...
...When French conservatives swept to power in 2002 on a get-tough platform to battle crime and illegal immigration, the government dumped the Mitterrand amnesty as ethically suspect - to the great satisfaction of Italy. It was under that revised position that Petrella was arrested following a routine identity check in 2007, when police noticed that the original Italian warrant for her apprehension that had been reactivated in legal databases. To many in France - where sympathy with reformed leftist radicals is widespread - the right's welching of the Mitterrand amnesty left Petrella unfairly hanging out to dry. Some also claim...