“France said no”, summarizes schematically The newspaper. And for this conservative daily, it’s a real slap “to the victims [italiennes] of terrorism ”.
On Wednesday, June 29, the Paris Court of Appeal delivered an unfavorable opinion on the extradition request of ten former Italian far-left activists who have been living in France for many years. People who took part in the armed struggle in the period known as the “years of lead” (during which, between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1980s, Italy was regularly hit by attacks from the extreme left and extreme right) and who had taken refuge in France to escape transalpine justice.
For decades, these activists were protected by the “Mitterrand doctrine”, a name used to designate the commitment of the former President of the Republic not to extradite former far-left Italian activists who had taken refuge in France, to the exception of those who allegedly committed violent crimes.
In Italy, voices have always been raised to condemn this decision by the former socialist president, who ended up