Posted on 08/23/2004 3:22:12 PM PDT by MadIvan
EMBARRASSED French police have launched an international manhunt for a convicted Italian terrorist who became a cult figure among intellectuals and the left-wing opposition in Paris.
Cesare Battisti, 50, triggered the search when he failed to make a weekly visit to a Paris police station on Saturday, breaking the terms of his probation. In the 1970s he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), one of several hardline groups — smaller than the better-known Red Brigades — that flourished in Italy during the anni di piombo (“years of lead”). He reinvented himself as a successful crime writer after being granted sanctuary in France in 1990.
After his arrest last year he was released on bail, with an obligation to stay in the Paris area and report to police. However, next month a French appeal court was expected to approve Rome’s request for Signor Battisti’s extradition to Italy, where he faces a life sentence for murder. Police suspect that he may have fled to Latin America, where he lived in the 1980s after escaping arrest in Italy.
Signor Battisti’s case became a cause célèbre for the Socialist Party and Parisian artists, writers and thinkers last February when President Chirac’s Government approved his arrest. That decision reversed the 1980s policy of President Mitterrand, under which France gave haven to fugitive political militants from abroad provided that they had not been convicted of “crimes of blood”.
Accusing the Chirac Government of betraying the promises of the French State, Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, this summer declared Signor Battisti to be “under the protection” of the city.
In contrast to France, where the intellectual world has long excused violence in the “revolutionary” cause, the Italian Left has firmly backed Rome’s campaign to have Signor Battisti pay for his alleged terrorist crimes.
He was convicted in his absence of murdering a prison guard, a police officer and a neo-Fascist militant, and of complicity in the killing of a jeweller during his time with the PAC.
Signor Battisti, the father of two French children, had been living quietly in Paris, working as a writer and superintendent of a block of flats. He denies murder and long ago renounced the violence that he espoused in his youth.
Italian officials said that his conviction had been based on material evidence, as well as testimony from accomplices.
Italy is seeking the return of 14 fugitives from the turbulent era in the 1970s and 1980s, when militants on the Left and Right carried out bombings, assassinations and other violence aimed at bringing down the Government.
M Chirac, who has the final say over extradition, made clear last month that he would turn a deaf ear to those who see Signor Battisti as a hero: “If a person is sentenced for terrorist crimes in a democracy and under the rule of law, it is our duty to respond favourably to an extradition request.”
In Rome, the Government of Silvio Berlusconi reacted angrily to the author’s disappearance. Roberto Castelli, the Justice Minister, said that France was guilty of complicity in frustrating Signor Battitsi’s extradition on murder charges. He said that the Italian authorities would “not falter in tracking Battisti down”.
Signor Battisti’s lawyers said that they had no idea of his whereabouts and were worried for his safety since he was recently found to have severe depression.
Oreste Scalzone, a fellow Italian political refugee in France and a friend of Signor Battisti, told Le Monde that he had advised the writer-activist to flee.
“I am glad that he has preferred the greenery of life to submission to the greyness of legal punishment,” he said. “I hope he is as far away as possible and this time really beyond reach.”
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
There are Crapouds even more to the left?
I think I know where he is! I believe that was him speaking for Kerry on Meet the Press yesterday! :^)
With any luck, they'll find him when the cement overshoes rot off his feet, and his body floats to the surface of the Seine.
Sure looks like a real nut case.
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