This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Cesare Battisti, a former leftwing guerrilla fighter wanted by the Italian authorities over four murders in the late 1970s, has arrived in Rome after almost four decades on the run.

His return follows a strengthening of ties between Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and Italy’s populist coalition government.

Battisti, 64, landed at the capital’s Ciampino airport in a government aircraft following his arrest in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra on Saturday night.

He will be taken to Rome’s Rebibbia prison, where he is expected to serve the first six months of his life sentence in solitary confinement.

Matteo Salvini, the far-right interior minister, and Alfonso Bonafede, the justice minister, awaited his arrival at the airport.

“Those who make mistakes, pay,” Salvini told reporters. “Italy is now a respectable country.”

Bonafede said: “We are telling the world that nobody can evade Italian justice. Battisti is a multiple murderer who committed serious crimes; his escape mortified the pain of the families of the victims and of an entire population. So many years have passed but the hurt has not been soothed.”

Battisti was convicted in Italy in 1979 of belonging to the outlawed Armed Proletarians for Communism, and in 1981 he escaped from prison. He was subsequently convicted in absentia of killing two police officers, taking part in the murder of a butcher and helping to plan the killing of a jeweller. Battisti admitted to being part of the group but denied responsibility for any deaths.

Battisti had been living in Cananéia, the southernmost city in the state of São Paulo, for years. Before that he spent almost two decades on the run in Mexico and France, where he was protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, a 1985 law that offered asylum to about 100 former Italian guerrillas “on the condition that they withdrew from politics”.

In 2004, Battisti skipped bail in France and took refuge in Brazil, where he lived clandestinely for three years until he was arrested in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro. After four years in custody, Brazil’s departing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued a decree refusing to extradite Battisti to Italy, and he was freed.

The case was given fresh impetus due to the friendly relations between Salvini and Bolsonaro. Shortly after Bolsonaro was elected in October, he promised Salvini he would send Battisti back to Italy to serve his prison term. He also said the extradition of Battisti, whom he described as a figure “adored by the Brazilian left”, would reflect to the world his government’s commitment to fighting terrorism.

A Brazilian court ordered Battisti’s arrest in December and he was found in Bolivia on Saturday. “We don’t know from where he came in or when,” said Bolivia’s interior minister, Carlos Romero.

Salvini celebrated news of the extradition on Sunday, posting a photo of Battisti on Facebook alongside the caption “the good times are over”.