Italy to appeal to Hague court after Brazil refuses to extradite ex-terrorist

Italy to appeal to Hague court after Brazil refuses to extradite ex-terrorist

2011-06-10 00:44:25 GMT+7 (ICT)

ROME (BNO NEWS) -- Italy on Thursday said it would go to the International Court of Justice to appeal Brazil's decision to refuse the extradition of ex-terrorist Cesare Battisti, ANSA news agency reported.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi expressed "keen regret" at the Brazilian supreme court's decision to release Battisti, who was convicted of four murders in the 1970s. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and President Giorgio Napolitano also condemned the decision and said it breached treaties between the two countries.

In its ruling, the supreme court voted six to three to uphold a decision by Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in one of his last acts in office at the end of last year.

"The need for justice of my country and the victims' families has not perhaps been fully understood," Napolitano wrote to Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, in January to try to get the decision reversed.

The son of one of Battisti's victims, Alberto Torregiani, has called Lula's decision "absurd, hypocritical and ignoble". He was paralyzed from the waist down in the 1979 attack that killed his jeweler father.

Battisti was arrested in Brazil in April 2007, five years after he had fled to that country to avoid extradition to Italy from France. He had lived in France for 15 years and become a successful writer of crime novels.

In January 2009, the Brazilian justice ministry granted Battisti political asylum on the grounds that he would face '"political persecution" in Italy. In November 2009, the Brazilian supreme court turned down Battisti's request for asylum. However, the court added that the Brazilian constitution gave the president personal powers to deny the extradition if he chose to.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-06-10