Deputy Premier and Interior
Minister Matteo Salvini said Monday he was ready to go to Brazil
and get former leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti if new
President Jair Bolsonaro decides to extradite him to Italy as
promised.
"I can't wait to meet new president Bolsonaro," said Salvini,
adding "I will be happy to got personally to Brazil also to go
and get leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti and bring him back to
Italian jails".
Bolsonaro's son earlier on Monday suggested that the
government is set to keep a promise to extradite Battisti.
"The gift is coming! Thanks for the support, the right is
becoming stronger," Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal deputy, said in
response to a tweet by Salvini congratulating Bolsonaro senior
on his election victory.
Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede said Monday that Battisti
must return to Italy.
"Cesare Battisti must return. For months the ministry's
offices have been in contact with Brazilian authorities, at the
ready for an event that might change things, like Jair
Bolsonaro's victory in the presidential elections," he said.
"We are following the situation with the utmost attention. WE
owe it to the families of Battisti's victims, we also owe it to
the Country," Bonafede said on Facebook.
Battisti, whose extradition was halted by former Brazilian
president Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, is wanted to serve out
several life sentences for murders in the so-called 'Years of
Lead' of leftist and rightist terrorism.
Battisti, who fled to Brazil from France where he had become
a crime writer, after the end of the Mitterand Doctrine, has
always denied committing murder.
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