Clouseau Justice

Terrorist Cesare Battisti was granted sanctuary in France by Mitterand in 1985, along with several dozen terrorists. He went on to become a best selling author. In 1993 an Italian court found him guilty of the murder of four and they have been pressuring France every since for extradition. A French court ordered the extradition, but, alas, Cesare Battisti has disappeared.

Roberto Castelli, a minister in the Italian government, praised the French courts for ordering his extradition this morning but attacked French "leftwing intellectuals" who, he said, had more sympathy for terrorists than their victims.

Exactly.

(The Independent story doesn't even name his victims.)

UPDATE: Guardian story on Wednesday says terrorists offered sanctuary in France number up to 100. The Independent had this understatement.

The row over the fate of Battisti, who fled to France in 1990 and was convicted in absentia of murdering four people during his years as an ultra-left terrorist, shows how far the European Union has to travel before achieving the so-called "single judicial space", in which extradition from one member country to another is as automatic as, say, a transfer from Birmingham to Manchester.

No, it's more like mass murderers in New Jersey being given sanctuary in say, Chicago.