“His Cesare Battisti I was wrong. I believed him, he was wrong. He was guilty. ”He says so Luis Inácio Lula da Silva with the frankness that distinguishes him in the course of an interview he granted to Tg2 Post. The founder of the PT is clearly embittered by a story that has surprised many.
Cesare Battisti, former terrorist of the Armed Proletarians for Communism and over time become a well-known writer, especially in France, for his noir books, has always maintained his innocence until 2019. Arrested for facts related to the armed struggle that marked the 70s of the last century in Italy, the former militant managed to escape from Frosinone prison in 1980 after being sentenced to 12 years. He fled to France, then to Mexico, Brazil and again to France where he remained for a long time as a refugee taking advantage of the Mitterrand doctrine which denied extradition for political reasons. His long hiatus ended on January 12, 2019 in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, where he was arrested by the agents of the small South American country and handed over to the Italian anti-terrorism men who arrived on the spot. He was transferred two days later to Fiumicino and then imprisoned directly in the Oristano prison. He must serve a life sentence, commuted to 30 years in prison, for two murders committed personally and two others in which he participated directly. The cancellation of life imprisonment was the condition imposed by Brazil, where he had obtained citizenship, to grant his extradition.
Brazil, Supreme Court overturns Lula’s sentences: the former leader can be reappointed in 2022
by Daniele Mastrogiacomo
It was Lula, in 2010, who decided Battisti’s future. His case was before the plenum of the Brazilian Federal Superior Court to discuss the extradition request from Italy. The Brazilian judges split up and entrusted the fate of the Italian wanted man to Lula. The then president, by virtue of his power, signed the sentence that rejected the request and granted him the right of asylum “which meant” permanent residence. “An error, which Lula now recognizes by asking” sorry to all Italians “.
After all, supported by a strong press campaign and by a vast movement of opinion that supported his innocence, Cesare Battisti has long managed to escape his responsibilities and deceive for more than 30 years the intellectuals, politicians, writers who they protected. But it was he himself, once locked up in a cell in Italy, in 2019, who admitted before the judges that the facts he was accused of were true. An admission that immediately appeared instrumental: collaborating, he aimed at a reduction of the sentence.
In the same interview, the father of the Brazilian left confirms that he wants to run for the presidential elections of 2022. “If I am healthy and if the progressive parties think so, I will run again,” he announced. He had already mentioned this in early March when his 12-year prison sentence for passive corruption and money laundering was canceled. Lula has come out clean from all the inquiries concerning him. Judge Sergio Moro was charged with bias in the trial because he heavily interfered in the investigation by suggesting prosecutors how and where to find evidence to support the prosecution. A serious violation of his role superpartes which vitiated the outcome of the trial and the same sentence.
The leader of the PT defined President Bolsonaro as “genocidal”, recalling that “those who came after me did not do what they had to do”. The far-right exponent is considered by Lula to be “irresponsible” for how he manages the pandemic: “Four thousand deaths a day is an unacceptable number,” he concluded.
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