Cesare Battisti, an Italian former militant captured in Bolivia and convicted of four murders in Italy in the 1970s, will be extradited to Rome "in the coming hours", the Italian government said Sunday. Battisti, who has been sentenced to life in prison, "will return to Italy in the coming hours, on a flight leaving from Santa Cruz directly to Rome," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte posted on Facebook after speaking to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Battisti, who lived for years in Brazil while on the run from Italian justice, was captured Saturday in Santa Cruz. Battisti was convicted in 1979 of belonging to the Armed Proletarians for Communism, an outlawed leftist group.

He escaped from prison and was subsequently convicted in absentia of four murders. He has denied responsibility for the murders. After taking refuge in France, he skipped bail in 2004 and turned up in Brazil, where he lived for years under the protection of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Brazil's former president Michel Temer signed an extradition order in December, but by then Battisti had disappeared until his arrest in Bolivia.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019