Will Vincenzo Vecchi be extradited to Italy? Or will he be able to stay in Brittany, where he has been living in hiding for a few years? This Friday, the Lyon Court of Appeal will be seized of his fate. The man, a far-left activist, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “violence” (contested) during the demonstrations against the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, during which a young man was shot dead. shot in the head by a rifleman. But the case is sensitive. And the man benefits from an important support committee calling on French justice to “resist”. The point to understand this thorny file.
Who is Vincenzo Vecchi?
Born in 1973 in Calcinate in the Lombardy region, the Italian began to act in the 90s in anti-globalization and environmentalist groups. He is one of the “10 of Genoa”, ten demonstrators sentenced to “aberrant sentences” for opposing the holding of the G8. Since 2012, he has taken refuge in France, near Rochefort-en-Terre, where he lives with his partner and works for a cooperative building wooden and straw frame houses. “Breton by adoption”, he “is perfectly integrated and very involved in the associative environment”, underlines about him Pascale Jaouen, former lawyer and active member of the support committee.
What facts are he accused of?
According to the defense of the person concerned, the evidence gleaned by the Italian investigators would be very thin. Which ones? To have taken “a few planks to scaffold a barricade” while the carabinieri charged. The person concerned was photographed by the police near a bank. From there to think that he was going to ransack the establishment or attack the police? For Italian justice, there was no doubt. Except that the activist “did not hurt or attack anyone”, attests Pascal Jaouen, recalling that there is in the file “no other testimonies and no other material evidence”. “He was arrested on the sole basis of these photos put together”, she continues, denouncing a “deadly judicial mechanism”. “The basic problem is that we don’t see it active. The only thing we can blame him for is having taken these two boards from a construction site”, supports Jean-Baptiste Ferraglio, member of the support committee, accusing the Italian justice of having “folded the case” for “in set an example”.
On what grounds was he convicted?
Vincenzo Vecchi was sentenced in 2012 – eleven years after the facts for which he was prosecuted – to twelve in prison. Sentence subsequently reduced to ten years in prison. He was charged with “devastation and pillage”. This subtlety of the Italian Penal Code, the “Rocco code”, introduced in 1930 under the Mussolinian regime, was revived after the riots at the Milan summit (2006) to “justify abusive repressions”. “It stipulates that we can prosecute a person who has not committed a material act but who was present on the scene”, summarizes Patrick Cabin, spokesman for the human rights league. A real political weapon, this legislation makes it possible to repress from eight to fifteen years of imprisonment anyone who participates in a major disturbance of public order by a simple “moral adherence”. “We can only be scandalized because this is contrary to all the fundamental principles of the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen”, he supports.
“This situation is totally absurd,” protests former prosecutor Eva Joly, taking the example of the demonstrations of yellow vests in France. “During the ransacking of the Arc de Triomphe, the most severe sentence that was handed down was a suspended eight-month prison sentence. That would have been more appropriate, she says. In this case, we have a sentence of twelve years, a sentence usually pronounced in assize courts for murders. “There is a factory of injustice”, pleads in turn Pascale Jouaen while Patrick Canin evokes a “judicial harassment” coupled with a “political harassment”.
Why does the support committee speak of “judicial harassment”?
A refugee in France since 2012, Vincenzo Vecchi, who is the subject of two international arrest warrants, was arrested in 2019 to be imprisoned for three months in Rennes prison. Since then, it has been brought before the courts twice.
In November 2019, the Rennes Court of Appeal ordered his release, considering that one of the two arrest warrants was extinguished. But the public prosecutor’s office is appealing in cassation. The case was then referred to the Angers Court of Appeal, a year later. Again, the magistrates refuse to extradite the activist. Their motivations are precise: the offense of “devastation and pillage” has no equivalent in French law and the penalty incurred is “disproportionate” in relation to the offenses charged. They add that this disproportion is “contrary to the principles of European law”. Except that the Attorney General appeals once again in cassation.
In January 2021, the Court of Cassation then turned to the Court of Justice of the European Union to find out its interpretation of European texts on this double criminality. The answer ? The differences observed in the criminal offenses of European countries are not a sufficient reason to oppose extradition. Back to square one.
On the eve of this third hearing, Eva Joly calls for “resist” “The court must say that Vincenzo Vecchi should not be handed over, because we do not know about this offense”, she continues while castigating the “two attorneys general” of Rennes and Angers “who lacked common sense”. “There was an elegant way to get away with it, not to appeal, and it was settled,” she said.
“The third time is the one that should put an end to these judicial errors”, maintains Catherine Glon, lawyer for Vincenzo Vecchi, convinced of “having solid arguments”. “It is not insulting the prosecutor to say that he is a dependent actor. If he decides to appeal in cassation again, it will then be a political decision, ”she laments. And to warn: “It is impossible in France to condemn someone simply because he is demonstrating. But if that’s the case, there will be no more limits”.
The judgment which will be reserved should be known in several weeks.