Cesare Battisti (born 18 December 1954) is an Italian former member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run.

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.

[citation needed] 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).

"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.

"[4] 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 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).

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.

[citation needed] 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.

[8][9] As of 2007, only Paolo Persichetti, 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).

The Conseil established that: the circumstance that some of the charges held against Mr Battisti, which led to the cited sentences, are partly based on statements by "repented" witnesses, is not contrary to French public order and does not constitute an infringement by Italian authorities of the requirements of Article 6 of the European Human Rights and fundamental liberties safeguard convention (...).

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.

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.

Later, the Brazilian Minister of Justice Tarso Genro granted him the status of political refugee, in a controversial decision which was much criticized in Italy, even in Brazil and the international press.

[20][21] In March 2015 a federal judge ruled null and void the decision to grant him a permanency visa as it would conflict with Brazilian law, ordering his deportation.

[30] Lula answered Napolitano, mentioning that Genro's decision is founded on the Brazilian constitution and on the UN 1951 Convention on Refugee Status and is an act of sovereignty of Brazil.

[31] Criticism was also based on speculations about the influence exerted by Carla Bruni, spouse of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on Genro's decision.

[33] On 29 December 2010, unofficial reports in Italy and Brazil said President Lula was about to announce he was denying extradition of Battisti, just three days short before the end of his presidential term.

[36] In March 2015, a federal judge ruled null and void a decision to grant him a permanent visa as this would conflict with Brazilian law, and ordered his deportation.

[38] On 12 January 2019, Battisti was arrested by an Italian team of Interpol officers in Santa Cruz de La Sierra, Bolivia, and returned to Italy to start serving his sentence.

[43] Until 25 March 2019, Cesare Battisti denied having committed any of the murders he had been sentenced for; on that date he admitted to the chief prosecutor of Milan (Francesco Greco) involvement in four killings.

In France, supporters of Battisti, such as Gilles Perrault, have called the 2007 arrest, a few weeks before the April 2007 presidential election, an "electoral feat", closely timed by the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate for the UMP conservative party.