AP News, August 22nd, 2007
French police arrested a former member of the Red Brigades terrorist group and plan to extradite her to Italy, the Justice Ministry said Wednesday.
The radical leftist group plagued Italy with attacks in the 1970s and 1980s. Its most notorious attack was the 1978 kidnapping and slaying of former Premier Aldo Moro. After about a decade of silence, an offshoot of the group reappeared, killing two government advisers in 1999 and 2002.
Marina Petrella was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of committing an unidentified petty crime, but was kept in custody because of an outstanding Italian arrest warrant, the ministry said in a statement.
In 1992, an Italian court sentenced Petrella in absentia to life in prison on charges including murder and kidnapping, the ministry said. Another ruling a year later confirmed the sentence.
The process to extradite Petrella was under way, the French ministry said.
Italian Premier Romano Prodi said he hoped Petrella would be extradited soon, adding the operation highlighted the importance of international cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism.
"We are certain this will shed some light on one of the darkest, most tragic and absurd periods of our history," Prodi said in a statement.
During the 1970s and 1980s, many Italian left-wing militants fled their country to settle in France, benefiting from a policy started in 1985 under former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand that allowed them to stay if they renounced their extremist past.
In the last several years, however, France's conservative leaders have moved away from Mitterrand's policy.
