Leftist fugitive Cesare Battisti, who reinvented himself as a writer in France while wanted in Italy for two 1970s murders, was arrested near Brazil's famed Copacabana beach.
Extradition proceedings were immediately set in motion after his Sunday morning arrest, said a spokesman for the Brazilian federal police, Bruno Ramos. Brazil's Supreme Court was to analyze the request for extradition, most likely to Italy. There was no immediate timetable on a ruling.
"Brazilian police had been following him for several months after receiving information from Interpol in Paris and Rome," Ramos said.
Like numerous other leftists wanted for their roles in a tumultuous period of bombings and assassinations in Italy, Battisti, who escaped from an Italian prison in 1981, took refuge in France in the 1990s.
Proclaiming his innocence, he lived there for more than a decade, making a career writing police thrillers -- until France changed its tacit policy, developed under former president Francois Mitterrand, of allowing Italian militants to remain in the country if they renounced their militant ways.
Battisti fled France after Paris signed an extradition order in 2004 that would have sent him back to Italy. Ramos said it was likely Battisti had been living illegally in Brazil since then.
A young woman from a support committee assigned to bring money to Battisti proved to be his undoing. Acting on a tip from Italian police, the French watched the woman for a month, tracking her to the Rio de Janeiro hotel where Battisti was arrested, French police officials said. It was not immediately clear whether she was arrested.
In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi called the operation "brilliant" and congratulated Italian, French and Brazilian law enforcement officials.
A former member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism, Battisti was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison in Italy in 1990 for the murders of a prison guard and a butcher in the late 1970s.
Battisti reiterated his claim of innocence in a book published in France a year ago.
"I am guilty, as I have often said, of having participated in an armed group with a subversive aim and of having carried weapons. But I never shot anyone," he wrote in Ma Cavale (My Escape).
Brazilian Representaive Fernando Gabeira said he would lobby against Battisti's extradition.
"Battisti is a man dedicated to his intellectual work," a statement on the congressman's Web site said. "Battisti deserves our help."
Gabeira himself spent time in prison, for the 1969 kidnapping of a US ambassador -- a move intended to protest Brazil's 1964 to 1986 military dictatorship.
France's tougher approach toward leftist revolutionaries also resulted in the 2003 extradition to Italy of Paolo Persichetti, a former member of a faction of the Red Brigades, to serve out a 22-year prison sentence.
Battisti is also accused of being an accomplice to the murders of a police officer and of jeweler Luigi Torregiani. Torregiani, who was killed in a gun battle with his assailant, was in Milan on the same day Lino Sabbadin, the butcher, was killed.
Alberto Torregiani, the jeweler's son, said Battisti needed to pay "until the end and stay in prison," according to the Italian ANSA news agency.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was