Custra murder: statute of limitations revoked for former militant Raffaele Ventura

The former militant of the Communist Combatant Formations will have to serve the sentence for the murder of Brigadier Antonio Custra, which occurred in 1977. The statute of limitations would have been interrupted by a provisional arrest in France in 2017. The defense has announced an appeal to the Supreme Court, while a possible extradition from France remains unlikely

The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Milan has established that Raffaele Ventura, a former militant of the Communist Combatant Formations resident in France, will have to serve a residual sentence of 14 years in prison for the murder of Brigadier Antonio Custra, killed in Milan on 14 May 1977. The judges accepted the request of the Attorney General Francesca Nanni, revoking the statute of limitations on the sentence relating to that crime. Ventura was definitively sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison.

The decision on prescription

According to the thesis supported by the General Prosecutor's Office and shared by the Court, the limitation period was interrupted in 2017, when Ventura was subjected to a provisional arrest by the French police for a few hours in execution of a measure requested by the Italian authorities. For the judges, that episode interrupted the statute of limitations of the sentence, making the terms start to run again from 2017. Consequently, the sentence is still executable.

The defense announces the appeal

"Until the Court of Cassation he will be free to come and go from France", declared his lawyer Davide Steccanella. "I will go to the Court of Cassation to have it explained to me how it is possible to consider the start of the execution of the sentence for the Custra murder of 14 May 1977 as a 3-hour stop in a police station without seeing a judge, by virtue, we read, of a European arrest warrant where convictions for facts committed up to 1976 are indicated. Therefore a year before and without any reference not only to Custra but not even to the crime of murder".

The long affair between Italy and France

The ruling comes after the Court of Cassation had accepted the appeal of the Attorney General against an order which, two years ago, had recognized that Ventura's sentence had expired, allowing him to return to Italy as a free man. The former militant has lived in France for decades on the basis of the so-called "Mitterrand doctrine". His name was also among those of the ten former terrorists who should have been handed over to Italy in 2021 as part of a political agreement between Rome and Paris. The extradition requests were, however, rejected by the French judiciary. After the Supreme Court of Cassation, the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Milan has now revoked the statute of limitations. However, it remains unlikely that France will authorize the extradition of the 76-year-old Ventura even in the event of a definitive confirmation of the decision by the Supreme Court.