Extradition Author Stays in France
Cesare Battisti, the terrorist-turned-author who disappeared this week to evade extradition and life imprisonment in Italy, will stay in France to fight his case. In a letter to his lawyers, the crime writer, convicted in Milan of four murders in the 1970s as a member of a far-left terror...
Cesare Battisti, the terrorist-turned-author who disappeared this week to evade extradition and life imprisonment in Italy, will stay in France to fight his case.
In a letter to his lawyers, the crime writer, convicted in Milan of four murders in the 1970s as a member of a far-left terror cell, said he was in hiding in France, where he has lived openly under a presidential amnesty since 1990, "because it is my country and I see no other in my future".
Battisti, who has the support of many leftwing politicians, writers, intellectuals and actors in France, has sworn he is innocent of the killings. He said in his letter that a Paris court ruling in June in favour of his extradition "condemned me to life in jail" because he would not be allowed a retrial in Italy.
"Locked away for life, 30 years after the event, it is my family and my children who will pay," he said. Battisti's appeal is due to be heard in late September.
In a letter to his lawyers, the crime writer, convicted in Milan of four murders in the 1970s as a member of a far-left terror cell, said he was in hiding in France, where he has lived openly under a presidential amnesty since 1990, "because it is my country and I see no other in my future".
Battisti, who has the support of many leftwing politicians, writers, intellectuals and actors in France, has sworn he is innocent of the killings. He said in his letter that a Paris court ruling in June in favour of his extradition "condemned me to life in jail" because he would not be allowed a retrial in Italy.
"Locked away for life, 30 years after the event, it is my family and my children who will pay," he said. Battisti's appeal is due to be heard in late September.
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