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Brazil granted refuge to the Italian Cesare Battisti, a fugitive from justice in his country where he was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of committing four murders that have in the 1970s, reported on Wednesday, the Ministry of Justice.

Minister Tarso Genro Battisti has decided to grant refuge to the Tuesday night, considering that there were "well founded fear of persecution" against the Italian, a writer who campaigned on a guerrilla movement in his country.


"We hope to be freed in 24 hours (Thursday)," said Camilo Toscano, the office of lawyer Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, a defender of Battisti.

He indicated that before being released, the granting of refugee status must be published in the Official Gazette and sent to the Federal Supreme Court (STF, supreme court) to file the extradition request and ordered the release of the Italian, who was arrested in a prison in Brasilia.


The Italian government had requested the extradition of Battisti, 54, to meet the life sentence handed down in absentia against him for the murders attributed to him, committed between 1977 and 1979.

However, the decision of the minister Genro that the political context in which the killings were attributed to him and the potential inability of broad defense for the radicalization of the political situation in Italy, generated a profound doubt on whether the defendant was entitled to due process. "


His remark is a reference to the legal measures adopted by Italy of emergency at that time to fight the armed groups, like that of Battisti.

In response, Genro said in its decision that chose to grant refugee status to Battisti.


The press office of the Justice Ministry said that Brazil is a signatory to international treaties on the rights of refuge, the Italian may not be extradited despite the supreme court has not acted on the request of the government of Italy.

The Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome that the decision Brazilian caught him, and asked President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reversed.


In this regard, Genro told reporters in Sao Paulo that Lula had been fully informed of the decision, but declined to comment on whether the president could reverse the right of sanctuary granted to Italian. He admitted however that the decision could be contested.

The Brazilian president said in response that the granting of refuge to answer a Brazilian tradition of asylum to people who face political persecution.


"Brazil has granted asylum cases even more complicated than this, remember that (former Paraguayan dictator Alfredo) Stroessner, spent 30 years in Brazil," said a presidential spokesman who was not identified by policy of the institution.

The spokesman said that if Italy wanted to contest the granting of refuge had to make an order for government to government, not a minister to the president.


Battisti had fled Italy in 1981 for France, where she received refugee status under the government of President Francois Mitterrand and began a career as a writer of mystery novels.

However, at the beginning of the 1990s, the government of conservative President Jacques Chirac canceled his refugee status, so they left France.


Authorities believe Battisti arrived in Brazil in 2004. He was arrested three years later and remained in the country pending his extradition.

Genro denied that the case could cause a diplomatic dispute between Brazil and Italy, which he described as "two governments to respect each other."