French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed on Tuesday that France will extradite to Italy a former member of the Red Brigades (BR) terrorist group who was arrested in a Paris suburb last August.
Marina Petrella, 54, was convicted by an Italian court in 1992 of the 1981 murder of a police officer and was wanted for other crimes, including kidnapping and armed robbery.
She had been living in France without any problems for 15 years but in October 2006 Italy issued an extradition request for Petrella and 11 other former far-left militants living in France.
Speaking on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialised countries, Sarkozy said ''we will abide by the European accords we have signed and the decisions made by the French judiciary''.
However, Sarkozy said he has discussed Petrella's case with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who is also attending the G8 summit, and urged him to work for her being granted a pardon.
Berlusconi, the French president said, ''said he shared my view and would intervene with the head of state to obtain a pardon for her, taking into account what has taken place since her conviction and her current state of health and psychological condition''.
Petrella went on a hunger strike after losing an appeal against her extradition and France's refusal to allow her to serve the rest of her sentence in France in order to be near her 11-year-old daughter, who is said to have ''serious psychological problems''.
The BR, Italy's most infamous leftist terrorist group, waged urban warfare in the 1970s and 1980s. Their most notorious act was the kidnapping and murder of Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978.
Some 140 former Italian terrorists are currently at large and about 100 of them are believed to reside in France.
Until recently France had always refused to act on Italy's requests for extradition.
Speaking in Rome, Daniela Santanche', spokeswoman for The Right, said it was ''scandalous'' that Sarkozy ''citing Premier Berlusconi, spoke of granting a pardon for the terrorist Marina Petrella who was sentenced to life in Italy''.
''I ask myself how the head of state will respond to the scandalous statements by Sarkozy,'' she added.
Santanchei' was the candidate for premier for The Right, a splinter group from the right-wing National Alliance which failed to win a seat in the April elections.
