Red faces as terrorist flees France

By Charles Bremner and Richard Owen

EMBARRASSED French police have launched an international manhunt for a convicted Italian terrorist who became a cult figure among intellectuals and the left-wing opposition in Paris.

Cesare Battisti, 50, triggered the search when he failed to make a weekly visit to a Paris police station on Saturday, breaking the terms of his probation. In the 1970s he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), one of several hardline groups — smaller than the better-known Red Brigades — that flourished in Italy during the so-called anni di piombo ("years of lead").

He reinvented himself as a successful crime writer after being granted sanctuary in France in 1990. After his arrest last year he was released on bail, with an obligation to stay in the Paris area and report to police.

However, next month a French appeal court was expected to approve Rome’s request for Battisti’s extradition to Italy, where he faces a life sentence for murder. Police suspect he may have fled to Latin America, where he lived in the 1980s after escaping arrest in Italy.

Battisti’s case became a cause celebre for the Socialist Party and Parisian artists, writers and thinkers last February when President Jacques Chirac’s Government approved his arrest.

That decision reversed the 1980s policy of president Francois Mitterrand, under which France gave haven to fugitive political militants from abroad provided that they had not been convicted of "crimes of blood".

Accusing the Chirac Government of betraying the promises of the French state, Bertrand Delanoee, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, this summer declared Battisti to be "under the protection" of the city.

In contrast to France, where the intellectual world has long excused violence in the "revolutionary" cause, the Italian Left has firmly backed Rome’s campaign to have Battisti pay for his alleged terrorist crimes.

He was convicted in his absence of murdering a prison guard, a police officer and a neo-Fascist militant, and of complicity in the killing of a jeweller during his time with the PAC.

The father of two French children, Battisti had been living quietly in Paris, working as a writer and superintendent of an apartment building. He denies murder and long ago renounced the violence that he espoused in his youth.

This month he said: "I have never killed and I can say this looking straight into the eyes of the parents of the victims and the judges. Everything is based on the word of turncoats, people who were paid to talk. I was convicted for all the actions of the PAC."

Italian officials said his conviction had been based on material evidence, as well as testimony from accomplices.

Italy is seeking the return of 14 fugitives from the turbulent era in the 1970s and 1980s, when militants on the Left and Right carried out assassinations and other violence aimed at bringing down the government.

Mr Chirac, who has the final say over extradition, made clear last month he would turn a deaf ear to those who see Battisti as a hero: "If a person is sentenced for terrorist crimes in a democracy and under the rule of law, it is our duty to respond favourably to an extradition request."

The Times

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10559671%255E2703,00.html