Paris, June 29 (AFP/APP): A French appeals court on Wednesday turned down Italy’s request to extradite 10 former members of left-wing Italian extremist groups exiled in France for their involvement in violence decades ago.
The ultra-leftist Red Brigades and other armed groups sowed chaos during the period in Italy known as the “Years of Lead” — named after the number of bullets fired — from the late 1960s to mid-1980s.
The court based its decision on the respect of private and family life and the respect of default judgement which rules in favour of a party if the other has failed to take action, as laid out in the European Convention on Human Rights, said the court’s chief judge.
Most of the 10 former members of these groups aged 61 to 78 have been living in France for decades and during the hearings insisted on their links to France and slammed Italy’s “persecution”.
France has long served as a haven for Red Brigades figures under a policy set by former Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand, who offered them protection from extradition on the condition that they renounced violence and had not been accused of bloodshed.
But last year President Emmanuel Macron gave his green light for the detention and potential extradition of 10 sentenced former members of the Red Brigades or other armed groups, in a bid to remove a long-standing irritant in Franco-Italian ties.
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