“I was wrong to grant asylum to Cesare Battisti, because he committed crimes and deceived many people, I apologize to the families of the victims”. For the first time, the former Brazilian president Lula calls the decision taken in December 2010 to “host” the former red terrorist a “mistake”. A protection that allowed the former special wanted of the “Armed proletarians for communism” to stay away from Italian justice for ten years. Until January 14, 2019, when he was locked up in the Oristano prison, where he is still serving a life sentence for the murders of Pierluigi Torregiani, Lino Sabbadin, Andrea Campagna and Antonio Santoro, committed between 1978 and 1979.
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The former Brazilian leader, in an interview with the YouTube TV channel Democracia, he told the background of his decision. He said he did not know Battisti personally, but that he had given him asylum because his Minister of Justice, Tarso Genro, said he was “innocent”. “All the Brazilian left, the comrades and many leftist parties and personalities were asking that Battisti remain here,” he recalled. In fact it was the militant wing of the PT, the Workers’ Party he founded, that put the then president in trouble by pushing him to give protection to the former terrorist. The one on Battisti, “was not an easy decision – he said – the former president Giorgio Napolitano and the Italian left were pressing for Brazil to hand him over”.
Lula has spoken publicly for the first time also of the regret he felt when he discovered that he had been deceived: “I felt a great frustration when I learned that he had confessed.” It was March 2019 when Battisti, for the first time, admitted his responsibilities before the deputy prosecutor of Milan, Alberto Nobili: “It was a just war – he said – but now I apologize to the victims”. Compared to the timely apologies of his former supporters, including Daniel Pennac, Lula’s mea culpa, a year and a half after the moment of truth, appears belated. “He could have made this admission of guilt earlier, they are superficial excuses, I do not accept them”, reacted Adriano Sabbadin, son of Lino, the butcher killed in 1979 in Santa Maria di Sala, in the province of Venice.
The repatriation of Baptists it was not just a question of international politics but a card played by the current far-right president Jair Bolsonaro since the election campaign, to distinguish himself from his political rivals, defined by the propaganda as “friends of communist terrorists”.
Now, according to some local observers heard from the Courier service , Lula would be trying to give a signal of moderation in view of the municipal elections in November, which in the South American country are a bit like the American Midterms, fall to the middle of the presidential term.
Sure it stays not eligible Lula, overwhelmed by the Lava Jato scandal, the Brazilian Mani Pulite, convicted of corruption and money laundering and released from prison in November after the sentence of the Supreme Court which establishes the three levels of trial for prison as essential. But he remains an icon of the left and perhaps still the man most feared by Bolsonaro.
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22 August 2020 (change August 22, 2020 | 08:06)
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