Deal with US lets 70s activist go home for cancer care
Rory Carroll in Rome Monday April 23, 2001 The Guardian
An icon of the Italian left walked free into Roman sunshine at the weekend after nearly two decades in prison for bank robbing, jail-breaking and kidnapping in America. Silvia Baraldini, 53, was released to be treated for breast cancer under terms agreed by the United States and Italy.
She will spend the next five months of her 43-year sentence under house arrest in Rome but supporters sensed that she would not return to jail.
She popped on sunglasses to mingle with tourists at the Spanish Steps, smiled for cameras and vowed to start a new life in a country which regards her as a hero.
A native Italian, she was transferred to a Rome prison in 1999 after serving 17 years in American jails for offences linked to the black power movement.
"Today I am happy. I'm trying to be an optimist and to have hope. I am starting a new stage of my life," she said.
Ms Baraldini will be free to leave her apartment from 9am to 2pm daily and to try to lead a normal life until September, when her situation will be reviewed.
American justice officials are understood to have blocked Italian requests for an unconditional release but supporters believe that is only a matter of time.
"It is better than nothing. I am used to disappointments. I'm prostrate from so much waiting and suffering in these last years," said the former inmate.
"I spent in prison the years most important to a woman. I would like to be able to recuperate. I would like to live my years of maturity in peace."
She was convicted of offences connected with a series of robberies including a hold-up in 1981 of a Brinks truck near New York in which a guard and two policemen were killed.
She planned but did not directly participate in the robberies which were to raise funds for political campaigns.
Ms Baraldini was also convicted for kidnapping prison guards in 1979 to help the Black Panther leader, Assata Shaku, escape prison.
The daughter of an Olivetti executive, she moved to New York with her family and became a student radical in the late 1960s, protesting for women's rights and against the Vietnam war.
Incarcerated in maximum-security prisons, her case was championed by the Italian left which lobbied for a transfer to Italy with a million signatures, demonstrations and parliamentary resolutions.
She was flown to Rome in 1999 on the understanding that she would serve nine more years of her sentence but Italian diplomats have sought US approval for an immediate unconditional release on health grounds.
According to the Italian media the US justice department quashed the plea, threatening to seek her return to America and hinting at ruptured relations.
Last week, the two sides agreed a compromise of five months' house arrest. Negotiations will continue to find a permanent solution.
A grey Rover picked up Ms Baraldini from the Gemelli clinic on Saturday and delivered her to her late mother's apartment on Via del Babuino, a smart shopping area in the heart of Rome.
Italy's left, three weeks from a general election, hailed the release. The only criticism came from the far right National Alliance which questioned whether other prisoners in Italy would have received such treatment.
Returning to a childhood home was said to be especially emotional for Ms Baraldini as her mother, Dolly, died only recently. Her only sibling, Marina, died in an air crash in 1989.
Ms Baraldini has not renounced her political beliefs and is expected to campaign for political prisoners in the US.
First she intends to visit an exhibition of the work of the photographer Tina Modotti. "And I dream of being able to see Rome at midnight," she said.