France: Italian political refugees
01 July 2003
There are around 200 Italian political refugees in Paris over ten years after they fled from Italy to escape trial and imprisonment. They remain in France without rights and placed in limbo by protracted legal battles over their extradition.
These people form the remnants of an almost forgotten period of Italian political struggle in the 1970s. The new social movements which grew up in the 1960s led, in the 1970s, to many forms of extra-parliamentary action. Semi-legal forms of activity were termed auto-riduzione, involving for example mass reduced payments of bus fares and rents. At the other end of the spectrum more than two hundred clandestine armed groups operated in Italy during the 1970s.
Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s over 20,000 "political offenders" were arrested and put on trial. In 1983 some 4,000 were in prison and 200 are still serving sentences. Many fled the country when bailed others perceiving their imminent arrest also fled. More than 400 gathered in Paris a traditional home for political refugees where, ironically, many Italian communists and socialists had found a home when escaping the fascist regime in the 1930s.
Both the Italian and French constitutions exclude extradition for people charged with political offences. The Italian constitution says that "repressive cooperation" cannot take place between countries not sharing the same notion of political illegitimacy. On the other hand it stresses that offences committed with the purpose of undermining the principles of liberty and democracy are not regarded as political. While Article 26 of the Italian constitution states that extradition has a political nature when "related to a non-political offence, [it] is aimed at the political prosecution of the individual". The international principle that when extradition is not legally possible the individual concerned is guaranteed political asylum is also recognised in the Italian constitution.
The Italian authorities' proceedings for extradition met with some difficulties. The claim that the people were undermining liberty and democracy was hard to justify as this was aimed at stopping any resurgence of fascism - many of the refugees in Paris had a record of violent anti-fascist activity. It was equally difficult to argue that the offences were non-political. The Italian Penal Code (article 13) also recognises that the offence must be recognised as such by both countries, so charges such as "subversive association" or "armed organisation" have no judicial meaning in French law. But in rejecting the Italian requests for extradition the French authorities were obliged to grant political asylum. However alongside the legal process there emerged an "understanding" between the Association of Italian Refugees and the Ministry of Justice. They would not be extradited provided they "kept a low profile" but, so as not to embarrass French-Italian relations neither would they be granted political asylum.
The effect on the Italian refugees varied. Some going to the French-Italian border to see friends and relatives were arrested by the French police and handed over; some were given one-way tickets to African countries where there was no extradition treaties; ten were taken over the border to Spain which duly extradited them; and thirty returned to Italy spontaneously to serve their sentences.
Those that remained are street-sellers, builders and decorators, and teachers but with little security of employment because of their status. Some have distanced themselves from their past. Through the "export" of the concepts of dissociation and "repentance" from the Italian terrorist laws a number of the refugees have become "respectable" and hold secure jobs, the majority in academic institutions, in France. Dissociation meant publicly renouncing previous acts and the politics of their groups repentance giving names and addresses and evidence against those involved in offences.
"Sentenced to norm