Carla Bruni comes to the aid of terrorist

Carla Bruni, the model turned singer and wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, is at the centre of a row (in her native Italy and in France) after it emerged that she used her influence over her husband to halt the extradition of a hunger-striking, former left-wing terrorist leader back to Rome.

Bruni and her older sister Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (pictured together) convinced Sarkozy to drop a court order to deport Marina Petrella, who was an operative for the Italian Red Brigades from 1976 to 1982. Petrella had been convicted in Italy of organising a series of terrorist actions, including the murder of a police chief and the kidnapping and murder of the former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, in 1978.

A French court had approved her extradition in December and an order to send her back to Italy had been signed by the French prime minister. But after "pugnacious" lobbying by Bruni on behalf of Valeria, an actress, the president changed his mind - citing humanitarian grounds because Petrella was too ill having begun a hunger strike. "We could not let this woman die," Bruni told the French newspaper, Liberation. "The situation had become intolerable, dangerous."

Supporting his wife and defending his volte face, Sarkozy said Marina Petrella “was in danger of dying. This hunger and thirst strike had to stop, which it did. There is a humanitarian clause, I used that clause."

But the the First Lady's intervention has provoked intense fury in Italy. A support group for victims of domestic terrorism said that it had chartered a train to bring scores of 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 that they have been shown".