BARELY two weeks after taking office, Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s President, a former Communist, prompted a dispute with the Italian Right by pardoning an extreme left-wing activist convicted of murdering a police chief in 1972. The move was proposed by Clemente Mastella, the Justice Minister in the new centre-left Government led by Romano Prodi, which also took office a fortnight ago after narrowly winning the general election. “This is outrageous, it confirms our worst fears,” said Roberto Castelli, the Justice Minister in the former centre-right Government led by Silvio Berlusconi. “Italy has moved dramatically to the Left.” The decision by President Napolitano to pardon Ovidio Bompressi also paves the way for the pardon of Adriano Sofri, an influential leftist intellectual who was also convicted for the killing in May 1972 of Luigi Calabresi, the police chief in Milan. Signor Mastella said that he had also asked the President to pardon Signor Sofri by the end of the year. Both Bompressi and Sofri were members of Lotta Continua, a notorious but long-defunct revolutionary group which played a large part in the bloody street violence that traumatised Italy in the 1970s, a period remembered as “The Years of Lead” (Anni di Piombo) because of the number of bullets fired by police and anarchists.