Rennes (AFP)
The French justice decided Wednesday in Rennes to agree a delay before ruling on the surrender to the Italian authorities of Vincenzo Vecchi: it will say on August 23 if the decision condemning this former militant anti-capitalist to 11 years in prison is in accordance with law.
Vincenzo Vecchi was sentenced in Italy in 2009 and 2007 for "devastation and ransacking" of property during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, and for taking part in an anti-fascist protest enamelled with violence and unauthorized in Milan in 2006. L The 46-year-old man, who had taken refuge in a Breton village where he had become a house painter, was arrested last Thursday under two European arrest warrants after 18 years on the run.
Wednesday before the chamber of the investigation of the Court of Appeal of Rennes, the general advocate and the lawyer of Mr. Vecchi, master Catherine Glon, "asked additional information from the Italian authorities with a view in particular to verify that the Italian decision was made in conditions respecting the principle of adversarial and ensure that the sentence is not prescribed ", said the prosecutor general of Rennes in a statement.
If the investigating chamber responds to the request for further information, "it will decide on surrender to the Italian authorities only after a new hearing," says the text.
"The investigating chamber is also seized of a request for release which it will examine in the weeks to come," the prosecutor general also said.
The statement recalls that the two European arrest warrants under which Vincenzo Vecchi was arrested on August 8 in Morbihan are consecutive "two convictions handed down by the courts of appeal of Genoa and Milan on October 9, 2009 and 12 November 2007, at the end of which the applicant must execute a sentence of 11 years and a half of imprisonment ".
About 250 people gathered Wednesday morning before the Court of Appeal in Rennes in support of Mr. Vecchi, deploying a large banner and waving placards that read "Free Vincenzo," said an AFP journalist.
Support for the Italian national made the move from the town of Rochefort-en-Terre and neighboring villages in the Morbihan, where lived for eight years Mr. Vecchi, a hundred kilometers southwest of Rennes.
For Jean-Pierre, a spokesman for the support committee that was formed very quickly late last week, "we are heading towards a political trial," said the spokesman, hoping "a postponement or a cancellation "of the proceedings on Wednesday to allow Mr. Vecchi to better prepare his defense.
He assures that President Emmanuel Macron "can do" what former President François Mitterrand did in his time, which in the 1980s allowed Italian La France.
© 2019 AFP