“Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti was arrested in Bolivia this night [Saturday] and will soon be brought to Brazil, from where he will probably be taken to Italy,” Filipe Martins tweeted.
Brazilian media said the 64-year-old is wanted in Italy on four murder charges committed in the 1970s as part of an outlawed terrorist group. An Italian court gave him a life sentence in absentia in 1993.
#13gennaio #Bolivia team di poliziotti italiani con polizia boliviana ha individuato e catturato #CesareBattisti
— Polizia di Stato (@poliziadistato) 13 января 2019 г.
Fondamentale l’attività dei poliziotti Antiterrorismo italiano #Dcpp e del Servizio Cooperazione Internazionale Polizia #Scip #Criminalpol pic.twitter.com/CdAVZKpEY4
Later in the day, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that the Italian authorities had sent an aircraft to Bolivia to return Battisti.
"Our plane is on its way to Bolivia, where it will land at about 5 p.m. local Italian time [4 p.m GMT] to pick up Battisti and return him to Italy. Here, he is awaited by our prisons, which will carry out life imprisonment sentence," Conte wrote on Facebook.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Sunday praised the new Brazilian government, national law enforcement agencies and the Interpol for catching Battisti, in a statement on Facebook, and promised the extremist would spend the rest of his life in jail.
