ROME, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Milan prosecutors on Monday requested the trial of 17 alleged members of a resurgent militant left-wing Red Brigades group for plotting an attack on a right-wing newspaper, the ANSA news agency reported.

A judge will decide the question on a date that has not yet been set, ANSA said.

The arrests of 15 people in February on suspicion of planning attacks raised the spectre of a return of the 'years of lead,' the 1970s and 1980s, when the Red Brigades carried out hundreds of brutal kidnappings and murders in Italy.

PARIS, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - A French court on Friday rejected a request from a former member of Italy's disbanded Red Brigades group to be granted liberty while she fights an extradition bid.

Marina Petrella, 53, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy for killing a police officer, was arrested near Paris last month following a routine police vehicle check.

ROME, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - The family of a victim of Italy's disbanded Red Brigades group has filed a suit against French actress Fanny Ardant after she expressed her admiration for the movement and its founder, a lawyer said Monday.

Ardant had stirred up passions by describing the founder of the Red Brigades, Renato Curcio, as a 'hero' in a magazine interview.

She also said she had 'always considered the phenomenon of the Red Brigades as passionate and captivating'.

But she apologised on Friday after her remarks caused outrage.

PARIS, Aug 23, 2007 (AFP) - A former member of Italy's disbanded Red Brigades group, Marina Petrella, who was arrested this week near Paris is planning to fight extradition to Italy, her lawyer said Thursday.

Petrella, 53, was sentenced to life by a court in Rome in 1992 for killing a police officer and seriously wounding his driver. She was also charged with holding a magistrate and of staging an armed attack.

'We will certainly in the coming days present a request for her release before opposing the extradition,' said lawyer Irene Terrel.

PARIS, Aug 22, 2007 (AFP) - A former member of Italy's disbanded Red Brigades group, Marina Petrella, was arrested Tuesday near Paris after 20 years on the lam for murder, kidnapping and armed attack, the justice ministry said.

Petrella, 53, was sentenced to life by a court in Rome on March 6, 1992 for killing a police officer and seriously wounding his driver. She was also charged with holding a magistrate and of staging an armed attack.

She was arrested in the Argenteuil suburb of Paris during a routine police road check.