Row as first lady intervenes to keep terrorist in France

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (left) has persuaded her husband to block Marina Petrelli's extradition. Photo / AP

A political storm blew up yesterday after Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French first lady, admitted she had helped to persuade her husband to block the extradition of a hunger-striking left-wing terrorist to Italy.

The Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy's intervention in what was already an explosive Franco-Italian issue is the first overt example of the "gut left-wing" first lady and pop singer influencing the right-wing President.

The Elysee Palace announced yesterday that Marina Petrella, 54, a leader of the Rome cell of the ultra-left Red Brigades terrorist movement from 1976-82, would not, after all, be extradited to Italy.

Petrella, who has lived in France for 15 years, was arrested soon after President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power last year promising a tougher approach to crime and terrorism.

The former Italian terrorist leader, who has a husband and two children in France, began a hunger strike which she continued even after she was released from custody by a French court two months ago.

It emerged yesterday that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy had visited an extremely weak Petrella in hospital last Wednesday to tell her her extradition would be cancelled on "humanitarian" grounds.

The first lady also admitted, in a startlingly frank interview with a French newspaper yesterday, that she and her sister, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, had mounted a concerted campaign to persuade Sarkozy to block the extradition.

"We could not let this woman die," Bruni-Sarkozy told Liberation. "The situation had become intolerable, dangerous."

Bruni-Sarkozy described herself this year as a "gut left-winger" who intends to work for humanitarian causes. Her concern for the fate of Petrella may appear strange because she and Valeria, an actress and film director, are part of a wealthy Milanese industrial family which fled Italy for France in the 1970s to escape the threat of the Red Brigades and other terrorist groups.

News of the first lady's intervention and the cancellation of Petrella's extradition provoked fury in Italy. An Italian support group for victims of domestic terrorism said it had chartered a train to bring its members to Paris to demonstrate outside the Elysee Palace next weekend.

Bruno Berardi, president of the association, said the train would be filled by "members of dozens of families [of victims of terror] crippled by grief and outraged by the lack of concern they have been shown".

Isabella Bertolini, an ally of the right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, said it was a "poor joke" to give humanitarian consideration to a woman "convicted of murder, robbery and kidnapping".