Mitterrand doctrine

The Mitterrand Doctrine was softened in 2002, under the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin during the presidency of Jacques Chirac, when Paolo Persichetti [it] was extradited from France.

The Mitterrand doctrine was based on a supposed superiority of French law and its alleged greater adherence to European standards and principles concerning the protection of human rights.

[citation needed] In its ruling, which breaks down to the root of French institutions, the ECHR decided that the so-called process of purgation in the absence, the new trial after the arrest of the fugitive, is only a procedural device.

The new process may therefore not be comparable to a guarantee for the prisoner that is given in France under Article 630 of the Code of Criminal Procedure,[5] the first trial in absentia is held without the presence of lawyers in explicit violation of the right to defence enshrined in Article 6, paragraph 3 letter c)[6] of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECtHR: Krombach v. France, application no.

[7] Following this ruling, France partly amended its default procedure by the 9 March 2004 "Perben II" Act,[8] untenable for European standards on human rights.

[9] In 2002, France extradited Paolo Persichetti, an ex-member of the communist terrorist group Red Brigades (BR) who was teaching sociology at the university, in breach of the Mitterrand doctrine.

In 2005, Gilles Martinet, an old socialist intellectual and former ambassador to Italy, wrote in the preface to a book that was dedicated to the Battisti case, "Not being able to make a revolution in our country, we continue to dream of it elsewhere.

Italian legislation also provided that if a defendant can conduct his defence via his lawyers, trials held in absentia did not need to be repeated if he was eventually apprehended.