By SOPHIE TETREL,
Associated Press Writer
Sun Oct 12, 10:07 AM ET
Courtesy Of The Associated Press / Yahoo News
PARIS - France has decided not to extradite a former member of the Italian left-wing Red Brigades terrorist group to Italy because she is in poor health, the president's office announced Sunday. It stressed that the measure does not weaken French resolve to fight terrorism.
Marina Petrella's weakened state and "profound depression" is potentially life-threatening, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said, announcing that the French chief of state had annulled an extradition decree for humanitarian reasons.
The statement confirmed a report in Sunday's Journal du Dimanche and comments by Petrella's lawyer.
Petrella, who is hospitalized, was convicted in absentia in Italy in 1992 of complicity in the murder of a police chief a year earlier. She was sentenced to life in prison.
In France since the 1990s, Petrella, now 54, was jailed last year, but a court ordered her freed in August because of severe depression.
"She cried a lot, she trembled" after being notified Saturday of the decision," Petrella's lawyer, Irene Terrel, said in a telephone interview.
She said her client's physical and psychological state was "very bad."
The French president's office said the decision was "an individual measure" that "in no way weakens France's commitment to the fight against terrorism as well as its cooperation with other democracies in this domain."
The Red Brigades plagued Italy with attacks in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, many of the left-wing militants fled to France, benefiting from a policy instituted under Socialist President Francois Mitterrand accepting them if they renounced their extremist pasts.
However, over the past years, conservative French governments have moved away from Mitterrand's policy.
Sarkozy's government said in June that Petrella would be extradited, but asked Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to consider a presidential pardon because her convictions were so long ago and her health compromised. Italy gave no indication that a pardon was in the offing.
In August, a Versailles court formally freed Petrella from prison.
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