The Court of Cassation examined, Tuesday, February 7, the appeals trained by the general package against the decision of the Court of Appeal to reject extradition requests for eight men and two women. Refugees in France for several decades, they have belonged to the “red brigades” or to other armed groups.
by Christophe Ayad
The endless judicial course of the ten far -left Italian activists, refugees in France for several decades and claimed by the Italian State for the execution of condemnations in absentia for acts of terrorism, passed on Tuesday, February 7, by the Court of Cassation. The high instance examined the appeals trained by the general prosecutor’s office against the decision of the Court of Appeal, pronounced in June 2022, rejecting the requests for extradition targeting the ten activists, now aged 62 to 79.
Rome had relaunched new extradition requests in 2020, welcomed favorably in the spring of 2021 by Emmanuel Macron, in contradiction with the Mitterrand doctrine, trained in the 1980s, which wanted France to offer asylum to Italian activists having placed arms and renounced violence. The ten activists, eight men and two women, including six former members of the “red brigades” and four having belonged to other armed groups, were arrested before being released while waiting for justice to decide on requests to ‘Rome extradition.
On June 29, 2022, the Paris Court of Appeal’s investigation chamber decided to reject all extradition requests by founding its decision on two main reasons. First, the ten Italians were not assured of automatically entitled to a fair and fair trial on their return to the country, in contradiction with article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Second, an extradition did not respect the right to a privacy and family life of these men and women who have been living in France for several decades, mostly married and having children or even grandchildren.
“Answer Cafouper “
Rare in terms of extradition, the public prosecutor of the Republic, Rémy Heitz, had formed appeals against this decision. In the first, he believed that the investigating chamber had not ordered a new additional information to ensure that those who were judged in their absence would benefit from a new trial if they were extradited. The second appeal asks the Court of Cassation to verify that the investigating chamber respected a proportionality between the attack on their private life and the facts alleged against them.
The four lawyers called to plead all stressed that the Italian state had sent three versions of article 175 of its code of criminal procedure which deals with the absence and that none of them guarantees an automatic trial in case of return to the country of the convicted person. M e Claire Waquet insisted on the “extremely crawling and imprecise response of Italy” which “is careful not to say that [the extrawards] will be entitled to a new trial”. Regarding proportionality, lawyers pointed out that he did not incumbent up on the Court of Cassation to apply it but to check whether it had been taken into account by the investigation chamber in its decision.
You have 12.69% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.