AP: Italian communists hail end of house arrest for woman convicted in U.S. for robbery

Italian communists hail end of house arrest for woman convicted in U.S. for robbery

The Associated Press

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2006

Rome: The remainder of a 40-year U.S. prison sentence for armed robberies and links to black militants, is now free thanks to a recent, nationwide amnesty, communist politicians announced Tuesday.

When Silvia Baraldini was transferred to her homeland Italy from a federal prison in Connecticut in 1999 to serve the remaining 23 years of her sentence, the deal included a condition that she not be released early.

But in 2001, Baraldini was transferred to house arrest while she was being treated for breast cancer for a few months. A court later extended the house arrest. A few years later she began working as a researcher for the city of Rome on women in the work world.

A cause celebre among the Italian left, Baraldini was convicted of robberies and attempted robberies in the United States, including a 1981 holdup of a Brinks truck. In 1983, then-federal prosecutor and future New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, won the long sentence for subversive association and other charges.

A guard and two police officers were killed in the holdup. Baraldini has said she had nothing to do with the crime. She was also convicted in the 1979 kidnapping of New Jersey prison guards to help convicted Black Panthers killer Joanne Chesimard escape from prison.

Baraldini, whose sentence was supposed to run out in 2008, benefited from a recent amnesty freeing inmates who had less than three years to serve on their sentences from Italy's overcrowded jails.

A communist leader, Giovanni Russo Spena, called freedom for Baraldini "a good day for democracy."