Cesare Battisti (militant)

Cesare Battisti
Battisti in 2009
Born (1954-12-18) 18 December 1954 (age 69)
Height1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Criminal statusConvicted; incarcerated at Casa Circondariale di Oristano
Spouses
  • Laurence Battisti
    (1983⁠–⁠1997)
  • Joice Lima Passos dos Santos
    (2015⁠–⁠2017)
Children
  • Valentina (b. 1984)
  • Charlene (b. 1995)
  • Raul (b. 2013)
Criminal chargeTwo murders, and accomplice in two more
PenaltyLife imprisonment

Cesare Battisti (born 18 December 1954) is an Italian former member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run. PAC was a far-left militant group active in Italy in the late 1970s during the period known as the "Years of Lead". Battisti was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy for four homicides (two policemen, a jeweller and a butcher). He fled first to France in 1981, where he received protection under the Mitterrand doctrine.

Battisti was tried in absentia and sentenced to 12 years for being a member of an armed group and for the material killing of two people and instigating another two homicides, based on testimony from Pietro Mutti. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1995. After the de facto repeal of the Mitterrand doctrine in 2002, Battisti fled to Brazil under a false identity to avoid a possible extradition, where he lived as a free man until an order of extradition issued in December 2018. He then fled to Santa Cruz in Bolivia, where he was arrested in 2019 by an Italian team of Interpol officers and extradited to Italy.

He is also a fiction author, having written 15 novels.