Le nom de Cesare Battisti est certes celui d’un héros bien connu de la Grande Guerre, mais il évoque également, de façon traumatique, les méfaits que la justice italienne a imputés à cet activiste provocateur et irréductible, né en 1954 près de Latina, dans le Latium, qui fut condamné à perpétuité par contumace lors d’un procès contesté car basé sur les accusations d’un unique « repenti ». Cesare Battisti ne fut certes qu’une figure secondaire des années de plomb. En France, son « affaire » hors norme a été largement mythifiée. Battisti n’en continue pas moins à être voué aux gémonies. Il nous offre donc une étude transversale intéressante afin de passer de l’invective à une nécessaire recherche dépassionnée, aussi documentée et objective que possible sur cette période douloureuse et sur ses conséquences. Les origines de ce personnage aussi déroutant et complexe que polémique, capable de nombreuses métamorphoses et très perspicace, et son contexte, permettent de mieux comprendre une dérive vers des groupuscules violents d’extrême gauche. Un mécanisme s’enclenche alors conduisant à une « affaire » aussi complexe qu’interminable dans ses méandres judiciaires, certes en Italie, mais bien plus encore en France, où les jugements des tribunaux s’entrelacent avec un vaste campagne médiatique et même ultérieurement au Brésil, jusqu’à nos jours. L’inflexibilité du personnage en est une cause importante. Il en découle une avalanche d’articles, déclarations et ouvrages très engagés de la part d’intellectuels relayés par l’espace médiatique puis politique. Pourquoi ce battage à rebondissements alors que les autres réfugiés qui bénéficient en France de la « doctrine Mitterrand » restent majoritairement dans l’ombre ? La réponse provient alors pour l’essentiel du recours tactique, de la part de Battisti, à l’écriture, utilisée pour se présenter en tant qu’intellectuel, largement sacralisé et donc intouchable en France, mais qui permet aussi de poursuivre indirectement, entre les lignes, le même combat politique. Ses romans policiers soigneusement élaborés et nourris de ses aventures et observations d’exilé dépassent ainsi largement les limites supposées de ce genre et soulèvent des questions qui intéressent nos contemporains. L’accusé devient accusateur et souligne maintes impasses de la modernité, redessinant ainsi son image à travers la fiction, au prix d’omissions et de clivages. Les phases de l’existence de Cesare Battisti nous prodiguent, après analyse, de multiples enseignements sur les ressorts d’une période de crise et sur ce qui agite encore la nôtre. / Cesare Battisti’s name is indeed that of a famous hero of the Great War, but it also evokes, traumatically, the crimes imputed by the Italian judiciary to the provocative and inflexible activist born in 1954 near Latina, in the Latium, who was given a life sentence in absentia, after a trial which was contested as based on charges presented by a single ‘penitent’. There is no doubt that Cesare Battisti was only a minor figure during the Years of Lead. In France, his exceptional ‘case’ was widely mythicized. Nevertheless, Battisti is still vilified. He thus makes for an enlightening transverse study, allowing us to leave behind the invectives and move on to much needed, dispassionate research, as documented and objective as possible, into that painful era and its aftermath. The origins of this puzzling, complex, and contested individual, highly perceptive and capable of numerous metamorphoses, together with his background, allow us to understand better his drift towards violent, extremist left-wing groupuscules. A mechanism is then set in motion, leading to a ‘case’ which seems endless, in its judicial complexities in Italy, but even more so in France where the sentences of the courts are interwoven with a vast media compaign, and later on in Brazil, still today. The inflexibility of the protagonist is a major factor in this situation. It entails a torrent of articles, statements, and very committed monographs from intellectuals, reverberated in the media and subsequently in the political sphere. Why this intensive media coverage, with all its twists, when the other refugees benefitting in France from the ‘doctrine Mitterrand’ can remain largely anonymous? Certainly because of Battisti’s main tactics— becoming a writer, and therefore an intellectual, thus sacred and unimpeachable in France— which also allows him to keep up his political fight, indirectly, between the lines. His crime novels, which are carefully crafted, and fed by his adventures and observations as an exile, reach far beyond the supposed limits of the genre, and raise questions that can capture our contemporaries’ interest. The defendant becomes an accuser. He highlights the many dead ends of the modern age. Thus he reshapes his image, through fiction, by means of omission and division. Analyzing Cesare Battisti’s life in its successive stages teaches us a lot about the cogs and wheels of a historical crisis, and about what still troubles our society.

[pt] O caso Cesare Battisti ficou amplamente conhecido dentro e fora da esfera jurídica, tornando-se um caso de grande interesse público. Dentro do meio jurídico, o caso despertou diversas questões, tais como a concessão de refúgio para criminosos condenados, a possibilidade de cassação da condição de refugiado e possibilidade de negativa do Chefe do Executivo de efetivar a extradição como uma decisão política e uma questão de soberania nacional. Ainda, o presente caso permanece suscitando questões, tendo o Supremo Tribunal Federal sido novamente provocado a se manifestar sobre a prescrição e decadência do ato administrativo que negou a entrega de Cesare Battisti para as autoridades italianas e sobre a possibilidade de sua expulsão e deportação. A presente pesquisa pretende, com base em estudos doutrinários, na análise do caso de Cesare Battisti e dos julgados do Supremo Tribunal Federal sobre extradição, analisar a possibilidade de revogação do ato administrativo do Chefe do Executivo que decidiu pela não entrega de Cesare Battisti ao Estado Italiano. / [en] The Cesare Battisti case became wildly known within and outside the legal scope, becoming a case of great public interest. Within the legal atmosphere, the case raised a number of issues, such as granting refugee status for convicted criminals, the possibility to cancel the refugee status and the possibility of the Chief of the Executive Branch to refuse the enforcement of extradition as a political decision and a matter of national sovereignty. Moreover, the present case is still raising questions, and the Federal Supreme Court has once again been called upon to rule on the statue of limitations regarding of the administrative act which denied Cesare Battisti s surrender to the Italian authorities and on the possibility of his expulsion and deportation. Based on doctrinal studies, the analysis of the Cesare Battisti case and the Supreme Court trials on extradition, the present work intends to study the possibility of repealing the administrative act of the Chief of the Executive Branch, who ruled that Cesare Battisti would not be surrendered to the Italian State.