Italy is aiming to get former
leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti back to serve two life terms
for four murders in the 1970s 'Years of Lead' despite his being
released in Brazil after a short-lived arrest, Justice Minister
Andrea Orlando said Friday.
Italy has the "clear political will" to bring Battisti
back, Orlando said.
Orlando said Battisti's release Friday after an overnight
arrest didn't "necessarily" hurt Italy's chances of repatriating
him.
Battisti, 60, is appealing against Brazil's ruling to
eject him last month.
Orlando said Italian authorities have been in "constant
touch" with Brazilian ones.
Battisti's lawyer Igor Sant'Anna Tamasauskas told ANSA
Friday that an Italian extradition request for his client would
be "absurd" because the crimes he committed have allegedly timed
out in Brazil.
Meanwhile former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said
"the question of Cesare Battisti's extradition also regards
Italian society, which must turn a leaf on those terrible
years".
Battisti, was released late Thursday just hours after
being arrested by police in Sao Paulo.
Battisti was taken into custody on the order of a judge.
But he was subsequently released after the regional
federal tribunal upheld an appeal presented by his lawyer,
Tamasauskas.
Battisti was arrested in Brazil in April 2007, some five
years after he had fled to that country with the help of false
documents to avoid extradition to Italy from France after the
end of the Mitterrand doctrine which gave sanctuary to
fugitive leftist guerrillas.
He had lived in France for 15 years and become a
successful writer of crime novels.
In January 2009 the Brazilian justice ministry granted
Battisti political asylum on the grounds that he would face
"political persecution" in Italy.
Then in one of his last acts in office, outgoing Brazilian
president Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva declined Rome's request to
extradite Battisti in December 2010, sparking outrage in Italy.
Battisti's time in Brazil could be about to end now
though, as Brasilia Federal Judge Adverci Rates Mendes de Abreu
has withdrawn his residence permit, while at the same
time not overruling Lula's decision to reject Italy's
extradition petition.
Indeed, the former terrorist may be sent to Mexico or
France, sources said.
VICTIMS' FAMILIES LOBBYING FOR EXTRADITION.
The families of Battisti's four victims has been lobbying
hard for Italy to try to overturn Lula's ruling.
They were outraged by the outgoing Brazilian
president's surprise decision.
Alberto Torregiani, son of a Milanese jeweler, Pierluigi
Torregiani, gunned down by Battisti's leftist militant group in
1979, said: "those politicians and judges should be hauled onto
a plane and brought to Italy to understand the nonsense they
have said".
Torregiani, left wheelchair-bound by the attack at the age
of 13, said he was "angry and upset" at the news and reiterated
he would try to organise street protests with the other
relatives - something he has since done.
Alessandro Santoro, the son of a prison guard, Antonio
Santoro, shot dead in Udine in 1978, said he was "very bitter
for us and all the other families who have suffered for so long
only to see ourselves humiliated yet again".
The relatives of the other two victims in 1978 and 1979,
Milan security police officer Andrea Campagna and Mestre butcher
Lino Sabbadin, also expressed their unhappiness with Lula's
decision.
Sabbadin's son Adriano branded Lula "an accomplice" of
Battisti's.
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