Daily Times

French police arrested another former far-left extremist from Italy’s Red Brigades on Monday, three months after the detention of nine other suspected ex-members of the violent group from the 1970s and 80s.

Maurizio di Marzio, a restaurant owner in Paris, had been sought in April when police swooped on former Red Brigades figures who were wanted in Italy for serious crimes including kidnappings. The arrests were approved by President Emmanuel Macron and reversed French policy, which since the 1980s had been to offer the one-time Marxist-Leninists safe haven provided they renounced violence. Di Marzio, who has not served his full prison sentence in Italy over an attempted kidnapping of a senior security official, went on the run in April because an arrest warrant for him was expected to expire in Italy in May. But a court in Rome ruled on July 8 that the warrant was still active, meaning French police began searching for him, sources close to the case told AFP.

Macron’s approval for the arrests in April was seen as a gesture of goodwill towards Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and a bid to remove a long-standing irritant in Franco-Italian ties.

Italian politicians had long criticised France’s policy of providing a safe haven for people considered to be terrorists from an era known as the “Years of Lead” — a reference to the number of bullets fired at the time. Di Marzio has served six years of a 14-year prison sentence over the attempted kidnapping of a senior police officer in Rome in 1982 who was left with serious injuries.He was arrested in France in 1994 but was never extradited. The nine other arrested former members have been released on bail in France while their appeals against their extraditions are examined.