Italian terrorists surrender in Paris decades after convictions

Two Italians surrender and seven arrested for crimes in 1970s and 1980s

File photo: French municipal policemen stand outside the police station. AFP

Two Italians convicted of left-wing terrorism in Italy decades ago turned themselves in to French justice authorities on Thursday as part of an operation by Paris and Rome for justice that had been stalled since the 1980s.

Luigi Bergamin, 72, a former member of the group Prima Linea, voluntarily presented himself at the Paris courthouse in the morning.

Raffaele Ventura, 71, identified as a former member of the Communist Combatant Units, did the same later in the day, the Paris prosecutors’ office said.

Seven other Italians were arrested on Wednesday at their homes in France.

Like the two who surrendered on Thursday, they were convicted in Italy of crimes in the 1970s and 1980s and included former members of the Red Brigades. Police are still seeking one person.

All nine faced a Paris prosecutor on Thursday and were released under court supervision, the prosecutor’s office said. The first extradition hearing will be held on May 5.

Bergamin was sentenced to 16 years, 11 months and one day for his role in the murders of two law enforcement officers.

They were Andrea Campagna of the anti-terrorism Digos agency, who was killed in Milan in April 1979, and prison police chief Antonio Santoro, who died in Udine, north-eastern Italy, in June 1978.

Bergamin was convicted of belonging to an armed group, instigating attacks aimed at undermining the state, illegally holding and carrying arms, aggravated robbery, aggravated theft, criminal association and aggravated murder.

Italian media also identified him as a co-founder in the late 1970s of the Armed Proletarians for Communism, and newspaper articles from the period also make that association.

Bergamin was arrested several times in Paris but released in 1985 and 1990, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported.

Ventura was sentenced in Italy to 24 years and four months in prison for the 1977 murder of a police officer, Custra Antonio, in Milan.

All of those arrested this week had fled Italy and sought refuge abroad before they could be imprisoned to serve their sentences.

The arrests followed negotiations between Italy and France after decades during which Paris refused to act on many of the arrest warrants Italian authorities issued for convicted left-wing terrorists.

France in 1985 established a policy known as the “Mitterrand doctrine", named after Socialist president Francois Mitterrand.

It said that Italian far-left activists who had fled to France would not be extradited to Italy unless there was evidence that they committed “crimes of blood".

A French court must decide whether to approve the extradition to Italy of each person.

The French presidency said final decisions could take two to three years, depending on appeals.

Five of those arrested were former members of the Red Brigades, which during the 1970s and 1980s carried out killings, kidnappings and “knee-cappings". The group later became dormant.

Among those detained Wednesday was Giorgio Petrostefani, 77, a militant from the far-left group Lotta Continua.

Petrostefani was convicted of the 1972 slaying of Milan police chief Luigi Calabresi and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Also arrested was a member of the Armed Cells against Territorial Power, which Italian police described as a subversive group, who was convicted of the 1979 killing of a Carabinieri police officer.

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