ROME, Aug 28, 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.

Lawyer Piero Mazzola, whose father was killed by the Red Brigades, said he had filed the case on behalf of the wife and four children of the unnamed victim.

"The soil of Venice is filled with the blood of those those she considers as being fuelled by passion," he said.

Curcio was arrested in 1976 and was sentenced to a total of 30 years in jail.

The Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist group formed in the 1970s, sought to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle and to separate Italy from the Western alliance.

Its members kidnapped Italy's former Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo Moro and murdered him 54 days later.

AFP

Subject: French news