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Eventi e Rassegna stampa
CASO BATTISTI
- da NEWSWEEK January 26, 2011
Brazil has halted the extradition of one of Italy’s
most notorious criminals. How exactly did Carla Bruni get caught in the
middle?
by Barbie Latza Nadeau
Alberto Torregiani was 13 years old on February 16, 1979, when his
father Pierluigi was shot in the head by members of Italy’s Armed
Proletarians for Communism (PAC) in Milan. The younger Torregiani also
took a bullet that day and ended up a paraplegic. Now he spends most
days in a wheelchair on the cobblestone Piazza Navona trying to make
sure the world won’t forget.
Torregiani’s protest vigil in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Rome
started late last year when outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva declined to allow the extradition of Cesare Battisti, a
member of PAC who was convicted of murdering four Italians in the 1970s,
including the elder Torregiani. “You get more by putting your foot down
and banging your fists, so that’s what we’re doing,” he tells the
supportive crowd gathered around him. “Clearly it’s not enough to use
diplomacy, so the people’s voice must be heard.”
Lula’s indulgence, penned on December 31, mere hours before he left
office, was a blow to many Italians who remember all too well the
violence that preceded the “years of lead” when their country was under
siege by national terrorists. Further infuriating Italians, rumors that
French first lady Carla Bruni, an Italian often at odds with her
homeland, had made a personal call to the Brazilian president to ask a
“personal favor” by not extraditing Battisti. Bruni’s involvement, which
she denied after being scolded by Italian politicians, came to light
after Bruno Berardi, head of the terrorism and Mafia victims’ group
Domus Civitas, announced it on Italian television. "Bruni told me that
she had personally called Lula asking him not to extradite Battisti as a
personal favor,” Berardi said. “She asked me not to tell the details of
her involvement.”
Though Battisti routinely denies any involvement in these crimes, the
fugitive militant has become a living symbol of one of Italy’s darkest
eras. And his protection by Brazil—which saw its own days of rage during
the 1964-1985 dictatorship—has incensed ordinary Italians and flared
into an international incident that is straining relations between the
two countries as never before.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is indignant that “a criminal
may soon be able to circulate freely on the beautiful Brazilian
beaches.”
Bilateral military and economic accords set to be ratified by the
Italian parliament have been put on hold by Italy until the political
climate is more conducive to agreement, says Italian Foreign Minister
Franco Frattini, who says he is indignant that “a criminal may soon be
able to circulate freely on the beautiful Brazilian beaches.” Italians
have boycotted Brazilian products and travel agencies, and promise to
urge customers to boycott Brazil as a tourist destination. Even the
Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Agency, where Italy
enjoys considerable sway, has hinted that the Brazilian candidate for
its presidency, José Graziano, may be shunned over the affair. “Italy
has a complex history, but the law on extradition of terrorists and
criminals is very clear,” Luca Guglielminetti, spokesman for the Italian
Association of Victims of Terrorism, told The Daily Beast. “The return
of Cesare Battisti is more than a symbolic gesture. It is a point of
law. Not returning him is a slap in the face.”
It’s little wonder. For the better part of three decades, Battisti has
topped Italy’s shortlist of outlaws at large. Tried in absentia in 1993
and found guilty on four separate counts of murder in the 1970s, the
former PAC operative escaped from an Italian jail in 1981 and has been
on the lam ever since. Battisti has lived a mostly comfortable exile
between Mexico, France, and finally Brazil. Following a brief stint in
Mexico after his prison break, he moved to France, where he lived freely
under the Mitterrand Doctrine, which sheltered Italian leftist rebels in
France who were not involved in “bloody terrorism” and could show they
had “broken links” with their terrorist groups. He reinvented himself as
a crime novelist, penning well-received books about terrorist activites—one,
Buena Onda (Good Vibe), even fictionalizes his involvement in the four
murders he was convicted of committing. When the Mitterrand Doctrine
expired in 2002, and when France later agreed to ship him back to Italy,
Battisti fled to Brazil. He is currently behind bars, but whether he
stays there or walks is still an open question.
Battisti was arrested by Brazilian federal police in 2007, but released
two years later when the Brazilian justice minister, headed by left-wing
Workers Party loyalist and longtime Lula ally Tarso Genro, granted
Battisti political asylum on the basis of his petition of “political
persecution.” The case ended up in the Brazilian supreme court, where it
quickly hit a legal quagmire. While the high court voted to withdraw
Battisti’s asylum in 2009, putting him back in prison in Brasilia and
theoretically clearing the way for extradition, it also ruled to leave
the final word to Lula. Rome, sensing an opening, stepped up the
pressure, but after sitting on the case for months, Lula finally
demurred, ruling to keep Battisti on Brazilian soil.
Some attributed the jolting move to Lula’s intoxicating 87 percent
approval rating, which supposedly fueled his determination—or
“megalomania,” according to opposition leader Sergio Guerra—to stand up
to pushy first-world powers. He might also have been swayed by
Battisti’s formidable international defense lobby, which bombarded the
Brazilian media with odes to the Italian fugitive’s innocence and claims
of a right-wing conspiracy against him. Or it might have been simply the
call of Lula’s wooly past, the onetime union leader and leftist
firebrand, obliged by circumstances to govern as a pragmatist and now
suddenly free again to channel his days at the barricades.
The Brazilian supreme court will have another crack at the case when the
full bench convenes in February. But in many ways the damage has been
done. Last week Italian President Giorgio Napolitano wrote a letter to
Lula’s sucessor Dilma Rousseff, underscoring what he called Italy’s
“disappointment and bitterness” over the decision to protect the
convicted murderer. Italy’s foreign ministry calls reversing Lula’s
decision a “moral duty” and promises to take the issue all the way to
the International Court of Justice in the Hague if necessary.
And now the European parliament in Strasbourg has jumped into the fray,
unanimously approving a motion to back Italy’s bid to bring Battisti
back to Italy, even while admitting they have no real authority on what
is seen as a bilateral issue between the two nations. Maurizio Massari,
spokesman for Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, says returning Battisti
is not about politics but justice. “A person who committed common crimes—four
murders no less—must be returned to pay for his crime in the country
where the crimes were committed,” he told The Daily Beast. “We want him
back in an Italian prison for a sense of justice for the families and
for our country.”
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http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/26/cesare-battisti-the-murderer-taunting-italy.html
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