A former member of left-wing Italian extremist group the Pink Brigades exiled in France has mentioned he “is not going to die in jail” in Italy forward of a French court docket’s determination this week on his extradition.
Sergio Tornaghi, 64, is needed for his involvement in assassinations carried out by the Pink Brigades who sowed chaos in the course of the interval in Italy generally known as the “Years of Lead” — named after the variety of bullets fired — from the late Nineteen Sixties to mid-Eighties.
Ten folks aged 61 to 78 — eight males together with Tornaghi and two girls — will discover out on Wednesday whether or not a French appeals court docket approves the extradition requests, doubtlessly paving the best way for imprisonment in Italy.
“Who’s going to learn if we rot in jail in Italy?” mentioned Tornaghi in an interview with AFP.
“No matter occurs, I’m not going to go off and die in jail in Italy. Even when there’s a beneficial opinion for my extradition, I’ll die in France. I’ll allow you to think about what meaning,” added Tornaghi.
Tornaghi, who was sentenced in his absence for being behind the homicide of his manufacturing unit’s supervisor within the Milan underground in 1980, has up till now escaped from a few years behind bars due to the so-called “Mitterrand Doctrine”.
France has lengthy served as a haven for Pink Brigades figures below a coverage set by former Socialist chief Francois Mitterrand, who provided them safety from extradition on the situation that they renounced violence and had not been accused of bloodshed.
However final yr President Emmanuel Macron gave his inexperienced gentle for the detention and potential extradition of ten sentenced former members of the Pink Brigades or different armed teams, in a bid to take away a long-standing irritant in Franco-Italian ties.
– ‘By no means participated’ –
The previous Pink Brigades member, who has lived in France for the final 4 many years the place he has constructed a profession in IT and had two daughters, maintains he’s harmless.
Tornaghi mentioned he belonged to the political department of the extremely leftist group and handed out their leaflets however “by no means participated in any army organisation”.
Throughout Tornaghi’s trial, magistrates tried over 90 folks in three months and examined the total vary of crimes — together with homicide, kidnapping, kneecapping, heists, subversive propaganda — allegedly dedicated by the Milan department of the Pink Brigades within the Seventies.
The last decade in Italy was marked by violent social uprisings. Far-right teams carried out random terror assaults in public areas to keep up a “technique of rigidity” in a bid to pressure the emergence of an authoritarian regime.
In the meantime ultra-leftist revolutionary teams carried focused assassinations in opposition to union members, magistrates, journalists, cops and politicians.
The Pink Brigades had been essentially the most infamous on the left and had been blamed for a whole lot of murders, together with the kidnapping and killing of Christian Democrat chief and former premier Aldo Moro in 1978.
The “Years of Lead” left 360 lifeless and 1000’s of injured, and sparked 10,000 arrests and 5,000 sentences.
-‘Street to justice’-
That is the political context of Mitterrand’s determination, Tornaghi advised AFP, who slammed Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti for the “gross comparability” between him and his former associates to those that carried out the November 2015 terror assaults in Paris.
Dupond-Moretti had in a Might 2021 radio interview requested if France would have accepted if the November 2015 terror attackers “had gone to reside for 40 years in Italy”.
However many in Italy consider the ten ought to face the Italian judiciary.
“The sentences will be mentioned and criticised however they need to all the time be revered,” mentioned Ambra Minervini, the vice-president of a victims rights’ group and daughter of a choose assassinated in 1980 by the Pink Brigades.
“The highway to a justice worthy of its title can solely finish with the sentence being carried out,” she added.
Tornaghi for his half is asking for an amnesty, an answer, he mentioned, “that might permit previous wounds to heal and to start constructing a shared historical past”.
“If we supply on cultivating hatred by calling for previous fogies like me, we’ll by no means recover from it,” Tornaghi mentioned.
