BRAZILIAN President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned down an extradition demand for an Italian ex-militant, Cesare Battisti, considered a “terrorist” by Rome for murders committed in the 1970s.

Fugitive Cesare Battisti, a former Italian revolutionary who reinvented himself as a writer in France while wanted in Italy for two 1970s murders, has been arrested near Brazil’s Copacabana beach.