After 40 years, the Mitterrand shield no longer protects terrorists

by time news

Time.news – On the basis of the “Mitterrand doctrine”, since the 1980s France has granted asylum to former terrorists, with the exception of those who had committed blood crimes. In all there are 200 names requested by Rome in Paris, which in the 1970s and 1980s became a refuge for hundreds of Italian radical left activists, welcomed on condition that they gave up the armed struggle. A welcome that has cyclically been a ‘hot topic’ of the French political and intellectual debate.

Its main architect was former Socialist President François Mitterrand, in office from 1981 to 1995, on the basis of a principle never written but formulated verbally on April 21, 1985, in a speech at the 65th congress of the League of Human Rights. “The Italian refugees who participated in the terrorist action before 1981 ended up with the infernal machine in which they were engaged and started a second phase of their life, they entered French society. I told the Italian government that I am protected from any sanctions ”.

To the Italian prime minister of the time, the socialist Bettino Craxi, who asked for the extradition of these refugees, Mitterrand confirmed that they had been granted “shelter”. The basic idea of ​​the “doctrine”, underline some French scholars, was to promote civil peace and to grant the Italian political exiles in French territory the amnesty that the government of Rome did not want to recognize them.

Mitterrand’s theories

On other occasions the French socialist president had already expressed himself on the fate that France reserved for terrorists and former terrorists. On February 1, 1985, in an intervention at the sports hall in Rennes he declared: “Yes, I opted for the extradition, without any remorse, of a certain number of men accused of committing crimes. I say it clear and loud: France is and will be in solidarity with its European partners, respecting its principles, its right: it will refuse any form of direct or indirect protection for active, real and bloody terrorism ”.

Former French President Francois Mitterrand

Mitterrand then recognized the presence on French territory of “about thirty active and relentless terrorists” which, however, he clearly distinguished from those “who came, in particular from Italy, to settle here and there, in the Parisian suburb, half or totally repentant , I don’t know, but they are out of the game. These I refuse to consider a priori active and dangerous terrorists “.

Mitterrand then returned to the subject during a working lunch with Craxi, on February 22, 1985. “We have about 300 Italian refugees in France since 1976 and who have ‘repented’ since they have been with us and to whom our police have nothing to complain. There is also about thirty Italians who are dangerous, but are illegal immigrants. We need to find them first. They will later be extradited if it is proven that they committed blood crimes. If the Italian judges send us serious files that prove the fact of blood and if the French justice gives its positive opinion, then we will accept the extradition ”, reads the report of the business lunch between Mitterrand and Craxi.

French historians and analysts trace the political origin of the “Mitterrand doctrine” back to 1971, immediately after the Epinay Congress, when a strong interest of the French socialists in Italy was triggered, looking at the prospect of a left union agreement. The French Socialist Party (PS) had the highest esteem of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), considered the only political actor capable of transforming Italy into a true democracy.

The years of lead

During that period, the judgment of the French socialists on Italy – in particular Claude Estier, Mitterrand’s right-hand man – was very pessimistic: “It is a fragile state, dominated by a single party, Christian Democracy, not exactly democratic, a country from the corrupt judiciary and in which the risk of a coup d’état was permanent “.

“So we had to show indulgence towards those who opposed the regime, even with violence” analyzed Marco Gervasoni and Claude Sophie Mazéas in the book “La gauche italienne, les socialistes français et les origines de la doctrine Mitterrand” (The Italian left, the French socialists and the origins of the Mitterand doctrine).

Until the first half of the 1970s, refugee extremists in France were few in number as the extradition policy of the then government, under the Pompidou presidency, was very strict. But the turning point came with the “Mitterrand doctrine”, long considered a staple of general policy on the expulsion of Italian activists and terrorists. Since then only two extradition decrees have been signed, both during the Chirac presidency: in 1995 the one against Paolo Persichetti, extradited to Italy in 2002 after the green light from the Raffarin government, and in 2004 the one for Cesare Battisti.

The debate in France

The question has always been deeply felt among supporters – the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the writer Fred Vargas, the ‘Verts’ (environmentalists), the League of Human Rights and various organizations such as France Libertés and Attac – and detractors of the line carried out by the various governments in the wake of the Mitterrand decision.

The former argue that “The president had given the commitment of the Republic and the doctrine was applied until 2002“While for the latter” what a president decided during his mandate is not a source of law, therefore his doctrine has no juridical value “.

Finally, in March 2005 the French Council of State, which had already refused to annul the extradition decree of Battisti, formally confirmed the absence of legal value of the “Mitterrand doctrine”. In 2008, President Nicolas Sarkozy decided not to implement the extradition decree of Marina Petrella for health reasons. The Italian Association of Victims of Terrorism has repeatedly expressed “sorrow for the consequences of the Mitterrand doctrine and the behavior of the intellectuals of the French left”.

In fact, the list of former Red Brigades who benefited from it is long: in addition to Battisti, the best known face also beyond the Alps, Marina Petrella, Roberta Cappelli, Giovanni Alimonti, Enzo Calvitti, Giorgio Pietrostefani, Toni Negri, Paolo Persichetti, Sergio Tornaghi, Oreste Scalzone, Franco Piperno, Lanfranco Pace, Enrico Villinburgh, Maurizio di Marzio, Vincenzo Spano, Massimo Carfora, Giovanni Vegliacasa, Walter Grecchi. Simonetta Giorgieri and Carla Vendetti, suspected of contacts with the new Red Brigades, would also be in French territory.

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