Rennes (AFP)

The former anti-capitalist Italian Vincenzo Vecchi, arrested and imprisoned in Brittany where he had fled to escape two convictions in Italy, asked Thursday in Rennes release under electronic surveillance.

Vincenzo Vecchi, 46, under two arrest warrants issued by Italy, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for "devastation and looting" of property at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 and four years in particular for "carrying arms" during a counter-demonstration against the extreme right in Milan in 2006.

Incarcerated in Vézin-le-Coquet, near Rennes, dressed in a gray sweater, he attended Thursday morning videoconference at the hearing of the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal of Rennes.

Me Maxime Tessier and Me Marie-Line Asselin have asked for his release accompanied by "sufficient guarantees": "house arrest with surveillance device" (electronic bracelet), "ban on leaving the territory of Morbihan", "ban on demonstrations" on the public road "," obligation of pointing "with the authorities and payment of a" guarantee to the justice ".

The lawyer recalled that Vecchi lived for eight years in Rochefort-en-Terre (Morbihan) where he worked clandestinely as a house painter and held responsibilities in an associative bar.

"The principle is freedom (...) this principle is provided by the European Convention on Human Rights," said Tessier.

"Of course he was working in the dark" but "since he is in France, he is French" and "Rochefort-en-Terre was not only a cave in which Vecchi was hiding, but a place to live", the lawyer who notes that his client did not commit an offense on French territory.

In this case, "the situation can only be contrasted with the repression carried out in Italy where the police were not flawless," argued the lawyer recalling that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Italy for failing to blame police officers present at the G8 in 2001.

- "Tired of running away" -

In front of the president, Vecchi admitted to having hidden in France to "escape his convictions". "I have never left French soil since I left," he said.

"What guarantees can you give that you do not flee?" Asks the president. "I'm tired of running away madam," Vecchi replies.

The Advocate General, pointing to the "contradictions" in the words of Vincenzo Vecchi, asked for the rejection of the request of the forty-year-old.

While "he was in France for many years to escape the demands of the Italian justice", he now claims to be ready to make himself "available to the Italian justice", said the representative of the public prosecutor.

The chamber of the instruction will make its decision Friday at 10:00. She will also give a ruling at the same hearing on a request for additional information made on 14 August concerning her convictions in Italy.

Some sixty people came to support Vincenzo Vecchi in the court of appeal. "Release Vincenzo without jail or extradition", could be read on a large banner.

For Jean-Baptiste of the "support Vincenzo" committee of Rochefort-en-Terre, this request for release is "a first step". "Vincenzo has nowhere to go, but he does not want to go anywhere," said the spokesman, accusing Italy of "botching the case".

© 2019 AFP