A reformed Italian terrorist turned successful crime writer has been arrested and faces extradition from France, despite a longstanding promise that Paris would always provide a safe haven for one-time Red Brigades militants. The arrest last week of Cesare Battisti, who has lived peaceably and openly in the French capital since 1990, has prompted a storm of protest. “France offered judicial protection to these men and women,” a Socialist party spokesman, Julien Dray, said yesterday. “Not to respect that promise would be unworthy of France’s traditions and an insult to our history.” Opponents say the government has broken a 1985 pledge by the late Socialist president, François Mitterrand, that members of the far-left terror cells, whose bombings and assassinations rocked Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, would be left in peace in France provided they renounced their past, did not go into hiding and kept out of politics. Full Story