Italian Minister of the Interior calls Battisti prison "a gift" and thanks Brazilian police and government | World

"We are preparing tomorrow for the arrival of this cursed criminal in Italy.Thank you to all those who made this change possible, the new President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who took the protection, because he is a murderer, not a writer or an ideologue, "Salvini told a news conference.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte confirmed that Cesare Battisti had not gone through Brazil before being extradited to Italy. It will be handed over to Italian authorities at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where Battisti was arrested by Bolivian police on Saturday (12).

• Cesare Battisti: In Bolivia, the prison was held without resistance;

The entry of Battisti in Bolivia being illegal, his deportation was requested by Italy and the Bolivian government complied with it. The initial plan provided for Battisti's return to Brazil on a federal police plane, which was then to be extradited to Italy.

Battisti was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 for committing four murders in Italy in the 1970s.

Battisti fled Italy, lived in France and arrived at Brazil in 2004. He was arrested in Rio de Janeiro. in March 2007 and two years later, then Minister of Justice Tarso Genro granted refuge.

In 2007, Italy asked for her extradition and, at the end of 2009, the STF granted this request, leaving the last word to the President of the Republic. At the time, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had refused extradition.

In September 2017, the Italian government asked President Michel Temer that Brazil reconsider the decision concerning Battisti.

At the end of last year, the Attorney General 's Office (PGR) asked the STF to give priority to the trial likely to result in extradition.

One month after the PGR's request, Minister Luiz Fux ordered the arrest of the Italian and paved the way for extradition in early December.

In his decision, the Minister authorized the arrest but said that it would be up to the president to extradite the Italian or not, because the political decisions would not compete with the judiciary.

The day after Fux's decision, the then president, Michel Temer, authorized Battisti's extradition.

Since then, the PF has launched a series of operations to stop Battisti. By the end of December, the PF had already made more than 30 operations in an attempt to locate the Italian.

Battisti denies any involvement in homicides and claims to be a victim of political persecution. In an interview in 2014 with Mario Sergio Conti's Diálogos program at GloboNews, he declared that he had not killed anyone.