Italian former guerilla on hunger strike in Brazil

Former Italian leftist guerrilla Cesare Battisti has gone on a hunger strike in a Brazilian prison to protest his possible extradition to face murder charges in his home country, a Brazilian senator said.                                           

Battisti handed Senator Jose Nery a letter addressed to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saying he was ready to die in Brazil rather than be sent back to Italy, where he is wanted on four murder charges from the 1970s, Nery said on his website late on Friday.                                           

"I am ready to die if I have to but never at the hands of my executioners," the letter said. Brazil's Supreme Court is expected to make a final ruling on Battisti's extradition in the coming days.

Judges are currently split, with four in favor and four against, leaving the chief justice with the deciding vote. Italy, which says Battisti is a terrorist, has pressured Brazil strongly to extradite him since Lula decided in January to grant him political refugee status.                                           

Battisti, 54, escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 and lived in France for years, but fled when Paris approved his extradition in 2006 and was arrested on the run in Brazil.

He risks life in prison in Italy on the murder charges dating from the 1970s, a violent period known as the "Years of Lead," when he belonged to a guerrilla group called "Armed Proletarians for Communism." He denies the murder charges.