Cesare Battisti (militant)

Cesare Battisti (born 18 December 1954) is an Italian former member of the militant group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run. PAC was a far-leftmilitant 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 . 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 March 2019 by an Italian team of Interpol officers and extradited to Italy.

Until 25 March 2019, Battisti denied having committed any of the murders he had been sentenced for; on that date, he admitted the involvement in four killings and apologized to the victims' relatives.

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