Italy goes after it's lost terrorists

The New Zealand News ^ | 8-26-04 | Peter Popham

[LadyDoc]

Italy goes after its lost terrorists

26.08.2004 By PETER POPHAM in Rome

Incensed by the disappearance last weekend from Paris of convicted terrorist Cesari Battisti, Italy says it will press France and Nicaragua to return 12 other convicted left-wing terrorists who have evaded justice by living in exile.

They include Alessio Casimirri, the only member of the Red Brigade gang that kidnapped and killed former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro still at liberty. He is living in Nicaragua. All the others are believed to be in France.

France agreed in 2002 to return Italians who are wanted for serious crimes, but none has been extradited.

Battisti's disappearance - yesterday the French daily Liberation said he had left the country - was greeted by Italy's right-wing press as proof that France is not taking Italy's concerns seriously.

On Tuesday, Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli returned to the offensive.

"The flight of Battisti," he said, "is the fault of the European left, which defends assassins and fugitives."

Italy's centre-left coalition, the Olive Tree, immediately fired off an angry letter to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, demanding an apology for Castelli's statement.

The row over Cesare Battisti, who fled to France in 1990 and was convicted in absentia of murdering four people during his years as an ultra-left terrorist, shows how far away European Union is from achieving the "single judicial space", in which extradition from one member country to another is automatic.

France's President Francois Mitterrand threw open the doors to left-wing Italian terrorists, veterans of Italy's so-called "anni di piombo" ("years of lead") of the 1970s and '80s, when communist and neo-fascist groups traded many bloody atrocities.

One of the reasons for what became known as the "Mitterrand doctrine" was that the left-wingers risked being tried under emergency laws which Paris did not endorse.

The Italians were allowed to stay in France on condition that they renounced violence.

Berlusconi's centre-right coalition has made the return of Battisti and others to face new trials a point of principle in its war with the left, and a question of national honour in Itay's relations with France.

James Walston, professor of political science at the American University in Rome, commented: "The row brings back a lot of nasty tastes from the years of lead ...

"It's an excuse for the centre-right to say, 'look at these lefties, they're still communists'. It's a way of smearing the left, saying that the left associates with terrorists."

And the Italian left's response suggests the Government is on to a winner. While the centre-left leapt to attack Castelli's imputation that it befriends "assassins", the unreformed left stuck to its guns.

In the independent communist daily Il Manifesto yesterday, Andrea Colombo wrote: "The Italian Government is pursuing the objective of locking up a gentleman who has broken every bridge with his past, and who for 10 years has not represented a danger for public order, either Italian or French."

But Walston said: "If someone has been convicted, they are criminals and they should pay some price. This shouldn't be an issue any more. This was 20 years ago, and there should be acceptance of what happened.

"Unfortunately in Italy there isn't even acceptance of what happened in the Second World War."

The whole debate has been given a twist of topicality by the decision last week of Cinzia Banelli, accused of being a member of a new Red Brigades offshoot (Red Brigades - Combative Communist Party), to give evidence against her comrades.

The new group, which has no membership overlap with the original Red Brigades, is blamed for the murders of two academics, Massimo D'Antona and Marco Biagi, who were helping the Government to draft a new labour law.

Yesterday Andrea Colombo described the latter-day Red Brigades as "the repetition in farce of the original tragedy".

[LadyDoc]

With all the laments about the war on terror, we forget that terrorists tried to destablize the Italian government in the past...

And guess what? France is hiding those terrorists...

[LadyDoc]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/terroristspast020426.html

is an old article from ABC saying the old terrorist groups are "reforming" again.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Red-Brigades

gives the history behind all this...and guess what? If you scroll down, they note these guys had links with the PLO...

http://www.ict.org.il/articles/red_brigades-palestinians.htm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/br.htm

[wildwood]

The Italians were allowed to stay in France on condition that they renounced violence.

i renounce killing, mutiliation, the joy of dismembering bod-eez, the thrill of threatening the world with chaos, the rush of the blood flowing through my fingers, the prospect of 75 virgins, possible martyrdom, the fulfillment of the koran...yes, i renounce all these acts of violence in the name of .......peace....

[mtbopfuyn]

Probably will find him scoping out France's railways.

[Vision]

Incensed by the disappearance last weekend from Paris of convicted terrorist Cesari Battisti, Italy says it will press France and Nicaragua to return 12 other convicted left-wing terrorists who have evaded justice by living in exile.

God Bless Italy

[cardinal4]

"The flight of Battisti," he said, "is the fault of the European left, which defends assassins and fugitives."

How come I havent seen this quote in MSM?

[JasonC]

"smearing the left, saying that the left associates with terrorists."

Not a smear, a fact. They are commies and they excuse commie murderers. They praise them. They make movies about them, lionize them, put them on their t-shirts, quote them, spread their doctrines, defend their followers, smear those trying to bring them to justice or oppose their power, advocate defeat and surrender in fights against them by their own country. In Paris, in Rome, in Boston.

[LadyDoc]

Furthur googling found this in the Washinton times:

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040825-073054-9161r.htm

"France's late President Francois Mitterrand threw open the doors to left-wing Italian terrorists, who were allowed to remain in France indefinitely on condition they renounced violence."

A similar attitude was found in the USA prior to 9-11. Indeed, an ex 60's radical had a positive interview about him in the NYTimes on 9-11...where he laughed about his terrorist acts...

The left still supports terrorists or tries to hide them...look at this exchange:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7436

"....Professor Glaberman accuses me of blurring the distinction between (legitimate) violence and (illegitimate) terrorism. But if I made an error, I would, to correct it, need from him some concrete clarifications about the actual Italian situation. Is it terror or merely violence when autonomists put a fire bomb in the gas tank of a Rome bus during rush hour? or burn stores and bomb buildings in Padua? or threaten to destroy the offices of "anti-proletarian" professors? or kill a policeman in Milan? And if the distinction between violence and terrorism can be made, does it apply equally to neofascists' acts done in the name of their revolution? For my part I think it is the autonomists, and not I, who have blurred the distinction. .."

The writer ridiculing the professor is Thomas Sheehan, who if I remember correctly, is of the left...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7727

is the original NYBook review of his book on the Red Brigades of Italy...