Cesare Battisti (born 18 December 1954) is an Italian former member of the militant group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run. PAC was a far-left militant group active in Italy in the late 1970s during the period known as the "Years of Lead". Battisti was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy for four homicides (two policemen, a jeweller and a butcher). He fled first to France in 1981, where he received protection under the Mitterrand doctrine.
Battisti was tried in absentia and sentenced to 12 years for being a member of an armed group and for the material killing of two people and instigating another two homicides, based on testimony from Pietro Mutti. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1995. After the de facto repeal of the Mitterrand doctrine in 2002, Battisti fled to Brazil under a false identity to avoid a possible extradition, where he lived as a free man until an order of extradition issued in December 2018. He then fled to Santa Cruz in Bolivia, where he was arrested in March 2019 by an Italian team of Interpol officers and extradited to Italy.
Until 25 March 2019, Battisti denied having committed any of the murders he had been sentenced for; on that date, he admitted the involvement in four killings and apologized to the victims' relatives.
He is also a fiction author, having written 15 novels.
Youth and PAC membership Cesare Battisti was born in 1954 at Cisterna di Latina, near Latina. He left the classical lyceum he was attending in 1971, engaged in petty crime, and then moved on to more serious offenses.L'appello: "Battisti in Italia e in galera" Il Tempo In 1976, he moved to Milan, and took part in the activities of the Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), an autonomist Marxist group which conducted armed struggle, and which had a "horizontal", decentralized structure, opposed to the centralist organization of the Red Brigades (BR). The organization, which counted approximately 60 members, had its roots in Barona, a district in the south of Milan.
Four assassinations were committed by the PAC: Antonio Santoro, a prison guard accused by the PAC of mistreatment of prisoners (on 6 June 1978 in Udine); jeweler Pierluigi Torregiani, who had shot and killed a robber in an act of self-defense (on 16 February 1979 in Milan); Lino Sabbadin, a butcher and member of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (on the same date, near Mestre); and DIGOS agent Andrea Campagna, who had participated in the first arrests in the Torregiani case (on 19 April 1979 in Milan). The PAC also engaged in several robberies.
The murder of Torregiani and Sabbadin had been decided upon by the PAC because both of them had previously killed left-wing militants.«La culpabilité de Battisti repose sur des preuves», interview with public prosecutor Armando Spataro, in L'Express, 15 March 2004 Torregiani was killed in revenge in front of his 13-year-old son, who was also accidentally shot by his father.Valerio Evangelisti, Valerio Evangelisti répond à 50 questions The son was left paraplegic and considers Battisti to be responsible for the shooting. "It's not about the person of Cesare Battisti," he declared to the national press agency ANSA, "It's in order that everyone understands that, sooner or later, those who have committed such serious crimes should pay for their faults." Torregiani: A Cesare Battisti chiederei solo perche , 18 March 2007
First trial and escape Cesare Battisti was arrested and jailed in Italy on 26 February 1979, then sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison for participation in an "armed group" ("partecipazione a banda armata"). He was sentenced on the grounds of material evidenceBattisti persiste et signe, Guillame Perrault and testimony provided by two "collaboratori di giustizia" (defendants who testified against their former accomplice) who benefitted from lighter sentences for their testimony.Cesare Battisti: dire la vérité, respecter les droits , Human Rights League (LDH), public statement of 17 March 2007 The status of "collaboratore di giustizia", also popularly known as pentito, was established by anti-terrorist legislation enacted during this period.
PAC militants organised Battisti's escape on 4 October 1981, from Frosinone prison. He fled to Paris and then Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, very shortly afterwards. While in Mexico, he founded a literary review, Via Libre, which is still active. He also participated in the creation of the Book Festival of Managua, Nicaragua, and organised the first Graphic Arts Biennal in Mexico. Battisti began to write at the suggestion of Paco Ignacio Taibo II and collaborated with various newspapers.
Second trial Pietro Mutti, one of the leaders of the PAC who had been sentenced in absentia for the assassination of the prison guard Santoro, was arrested in 1982. He sought the status of collaboratore di giustizia and his testimony, which helped him reduce his sentence, implicated Battisti and an accomplice in the four assassinations claimed by the PAC. Battisti's trial was thus reopened in 1987, and he was sentenced in absentia in 1988 for two assassinations (Santoro and DIGOS agent Campagna) and complicity in murder in the two others (jeweler Torregiani and butcher Sabbadin). The court sentenced him in 1995, on appeal, to a life-sentence. Two years earlier, the Court of Cassation had quashed, on procedural grounds, the case against Battisti's accomplice, who had also been accused by Pietro Mutti.
Return to France In 1985, the Socialist President of France François Mitterrand had indicated that "leftist Italian activists who were not indicted for violent crimes and had given up terrorist activity would not be extradited to Italy"; this became known as the "Mitterrand doctrine". Many Italian political activists had fled to France during the 1970s-1980s. Trusting in this declaration, Battisti returned to France in 1990, where he was arrested at Italy's request in 1991, when his sentence was confirmed in the Court of Cassation. He thus passed five months in Fresnes prison and then was freed after the extradition request was rejected by the Paris Appeal Court on 29 May 1991. French justice concluded that the anti-terrorist legislation enacted in Italy "went against the French principles of law," which, along with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), prohibited in particular extradition of a person sentenced in absentia if that person had not been in a condition to adequately defend himself during his trial. The court also declared the evidence against Battisti as "contradictory" and "worthy of a military justice."Vantaggiato, Iaia (2009) Cesare Battisti, no all'estradizione quotation: "Nell'aprile '91 la Chambre d'Accusation lo dichiarò non estradabile in base alla dottrina Mitterrand che garantiva protezione ai latitanti per motivi politici. La magistratura francese bollò le prove a suo carico come "contraddittorie" e "degne di una giustizia militare"." Original French quotation: "dignes d'une justice militaire"
After his release in 1991, Battisti lived in Paris, where he wrote his first novel, Les Habits d'ombre ("The shadow clothes"). Two thrillers, L'Ombre rouge ("The red shadow") and Buena onda ("Good wave"), took as their setting and backdrop the Parisian world of Italian fugitives from justice. Another major novel, titled Dernières cartouches ("Last bullets"), takes place in Italy during the "years of lead".
In 1997, jointly with other left-wing Italians who had fled to France and were accused of taking part in violent crimes, he asked the President of Italy at the time, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (DC), for amnesty without success.
Arrest in France On 10 February 2004, the French government arrested Battisti at Italy's request and planned to extradite him to Italy. On 30 June 2004, the Paris Court of Appeal approved his extradition. An appeal to the Court of Cassation was filed against this opinion, and another to the Conseil d'État against the extradition decree. President Jacques Chirac stated on 2 July 2004 that he would not oppose the French justice system's decision to extradite him. Perben confirmed Paris' new position: "There is no ambiguity. There has been a change of attitude from France, and I support it", (in reference to the "Mitterrand doctrine"), among other reasons "because of the European construction".Richard Mallié, deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Question au gouvernement: Extradition de Cesare Battisti, 26 October 2004 Clarisse Vernhes, « Paris prête à extrader d’autres «brigadistes», in RFI, 2002
As of 2007, only Paolo Persichetti, a former member of the Unità Comuniste Combattenti, among the 200 Italians involved in Court cases dealing with political violence requested by Italy, had been extradited (in August 2002). He was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison. Minister Edouard Balladur signed Persichetti's extradition decree in 1994; it was validated by the Conseil d'Etat the following year. According to RFI radio station, the Perben-Castelli agreement was divided in three parts: all events before 1982 would be prescribed "except in case of exceptional gravity"; facts between 1982 and 1993 would be "examined on a case-by-case basis", in function of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) principle and of the "conditions in which the trials took place in Italy".
Still claiming innocence, Cesare Battisti failed to check in at the local police station while on parole and went underground on 21 August 2004.
On 18 March 2005, the Conseil d'Etat, ruling ultimately for Battisti's extradition, affirmed clearly that the Italian legislation did not conflict with the French principles of law. The Conseil established that:
In July 2005, the Italian press revealed the existence of the Department of Anti-terrorism Strategic Studies (DSSA), a "parallel police" created by Gaetano Saya, leader of New Italian Social Movement neofascist party, and Riccardo Sindoca, two leaders of the National Union of the Police Forces (Unpf). Both claimed they were former members of Gladio, NATO's "stay-behind" paramilitary organization involved in Italy's strategy of tension and various alleged activist acts. According to Il Messaggero, quoted by The Independent, judicial sources declared that wiretaps suggested DSSA members had been planning to kidnap Cesare Battisti. (URL accessed on 22 January 2007)
On 5 February 2005, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which it expressed its trust "that the re-examination of the decision on the extradition of Cesare Battisti will take into account the judgment delivered by an EU Member State in full compliance with the principle of the rule of law in the European Union".
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in its December 2006 decision, rejected Battisti's claim that France's extradition decision was illegitimate. The Court stated:
The applicant had patently been informed of the accusation against him and of the progress of the proceedings before the Italian courts, notwithstanding the fact that he had absconded. Furthermore, the applicant, who had deliberately chosen to remain on the run after escaping from prison, had received effective assistance during the proceedings from several lawyers specially appointed by him. Hence, the Italian and subsequently the French authorities had been entitled to conclude that the applicant had unequivocally waived his right to appear and be tried in person. The French authorities had therefore taken due account of all the circumstances of the case and of the Court's case-law in granting the extradition request made by the Italian authorities: manifestly ill-founded.European Court of Human Rights's decision (Sub art. 6, "claims inadmissible" : Life sentence following a conviction in absentia in "Battisti v. France," Information note n. 92)
Arrest and asylum in Brazil