Rome on Sunday sent an aircraft to Bolivia to collect the 64-year-old and bring him back to Italy.

Battisti, who has been sentenced to life in prison for four murders in the 1970s, was arrested on Saturday after an international police squad tracked him to the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de La Sierra.

He had been living in Brazil for years, but last month the nation’s outgoing president signed a decree ordering his extradition.

Italian police released a video of Battisti taken just hours before his capture, showing him seemingly oblivious to the surveillance cameras tracking him as he walked casually down the street in jeans, a blue T-shirt and sunglasses.

“Cesare Battisti’s long flight is over,” Italian Justice Minister Alfonso Buonafede declared.

Battisti escaped from an Italian prison in 1981, while awaiting trial on four counts of murder allegedly committed when he was a member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism.

He was convicted in absentia in 1990, and is facing a life term for the deaths of two police officers, a jeweller and a butcher.

Battisti has acknowledged membership in the group but has denied killing anyone.

Battisti initially fled to Mexico and then travelled to France, where he joined dozens of left-wing Italian militants who sought official protection from the French government.

Like Battisti, they had fled during Italy’s “years of lead”, a violent period during the 1970s and 1980s, when militants on the left and right carried out bombings, assassinations and other violent acts in an attempt to bring down the Italian government.

After political conditions changed in France, Battisti fled to Brazil in 2004 to avoid being extradited.

He was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, after which the Italian government requested that he be handed over.

But former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is now in prison for corruption, granted him asylum in 2010.

Battisti was eventually released from jail but was arrested again in 2017 after he was caught trying to cross the Brazil-Bolivia border carrying the equivalent of about USD 7500 in undeclared cash.

He was released several days later.

As a result of that incident, Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal Justice Luiz Fux announced in December that Interpol had issued a request for Battisti’s arrest on tax evasion and money-laundering charges, leading him to issue a Brazilian warrant.

Based on that, outgoing Brazilian President Michel Temer signed the decree ordering the Battisti’s extradition.

With AAP