Italy sent an aircraft to Bolivia on Sunday to pick up fugitive left-wing militant Cesare Battisti who was captured there nearly three decades after being convicted of murder. The development sets the stage for a climax to one of Italy’s longest-running efforts to bring a fugitive to justice.

Bolivian police, working with Italian agents, arrested Battisti, 64, overnight in Santa Cruz de La Sierra, Italian police said. He had been living in Brazil for years, but last month Brazil’s outgoing president signed a decree ordering his extradition, apparently sparking Battisti’s latest flight.

Italian police released a video of Battisti they said was taken hours before his capture, showing him seemingly oblivious that he was under surveillance as he walked casually down the street in jeans, a blue T-shirt and sunglasses. A subsequent image showed Battisti’s mug shot under the seal of the Bolivian police.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said a government aircraft was expected to land Sunday afternoon in Bolivia. The Foreign Ministry vowed to have Battisti extradited “as quickly as possible” and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini called him a “delinquent who doesn’t deserve to live comfortably on the beach but rather to finish his days in prison.”

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 jeweler and a butcher.

Battisti has acknowledged membership in the group but has denied killing anyone and has painted himself as a political refugee.

Battisti initially fled to France, where he joined a group of dozens of left-wing Italian militants who enjoyed official protection from France’s Socialist government. Like Battisti, they had fled during Italy’s “years of lead,” a bloody and turbulent era in the 1970s and 1980s when militants on the left and right carried out bombings, assassinations and other violence aimed at bringing down the Italian government.

After the political winds changed in France, Battisti fled to Mexico before escaping to Brazil to avoid being extradited. He was arrested in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, prompting the Italian government to request that he be handed over. But former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva 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 $7,500 in undeclared cash. He was released after a few days.

As a result of that incident, Brazilian Supreme Federal Tribunal Justice Luiz Fux said 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 fugitive’s extradition.

Salvini praised Bolivian police and Brazil’s new government for following through on the fugitive’s case.

President Sergio Mattarella said Battisti should be returned to Italy to “serve his sentence for the grave crimes that stained Italy and let the same be said for all fugitives abroad.”
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Greece’s conservative defense minister, who leads the junior partner in the country’s coalition government, resigned Sunday over the Macedonia name deal, which he opposes.

Panos Kammenos announced his resignation after meeting with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday morning. He said his party is quitting the government.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said, in response, that he will ask for a vote of confidence in Parliament in the coming week. He added he had a “frank discussion” with Kammenos, whom he thanked for his government partnership.

Tsipras also announced that Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will replace Kammenos as defense minister.

Greece and Macedonia agreed last June to a deal that would change the name of Greece’s northern neighbor to North Macedonia. In exchange, Greece would lift its objections to the country joining NATO.

Macedonia’s parliament ratified the deal on Friday and the Greek parliament now needs a majority for its ratification.

Tsipras’ left-wing Syriza party has 145 deputies in the 300-member Greek Parliament, while Kammenos’ right-populist Independent Greeks party has seven. With the departure of his coalition partner, Tsipras would need opposition help to pass the Macedonia name deal.
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No one is sure about how many migrant children are living in Spain without their parents — and that’s part of the problem.

Three months ago, Spanish officials estimated there were 10,000 unaccompanied minors living in the country — 70 percent of them Moroccan. But more than 11,000 migrant children were recorded having arrived in Spain in 2018 alone, and previous migrant influxes had already swept in at least 4,000, say civil-society groups.

“The registry of unaccompanied minors is not working properly,” says the non-profit Fundacion Raices, which promotes the rights of migrant children. Not knowing the actual numbers is “very worrying, because it speaks of the mismanagement that prevails in our country in the protection policies of minors,” the non-profit has warned.

The plight of child migrants in Spain is being highlighted once again, this time in the run-up to a possible snap election later this year that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who leads a fragile minority government, may decide to call. Populist right wing parties are following the playbook of their counterparts in neighboring Italy and have focused on migrants as a possible vote-winning issue in pre-election campaigning.

Last month, Vox became the first far-right party in four-decades to win seats in a regional assembly in Spain, partly on the back of its call for illegal immigrants to be repatriated and for walls to built around Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves in North Africa, to stop illegal migrants who have been climbing over the border fences.

The leader of Spain’s conservative opposition Popular party, led by Pablo Casado, is hardening its anti-immigrant rhetoric, prompting Sanchez to accuse it of fueling “the politics of fear.”

And there’s plenty of fear and frustration to go around. In Barcelona, locals cite lawlessness as their biggest headache, ahead of affordable housing or the intractable Catalan independence issue. With petty theft, violent robberies and burglaries all increasing as well begging and illegal street selling, many neighborhood associations in the Catalan capital blame asylum-seekers — among them migrant children.

Thousands of unaccompanied children in Spain are housed in overcrowded migrant centers and hundreds are living in squalid and dangerous conditions on the streets as potential prey for sexual exploitation.

Last month, police in Barcelona — as they do in some other Spanish cities — periodically clear the youngsters off the streets, taking them to already strained centers, which aren’t allowed under the law to detain them, if they want to leave, as many do.

For civil-society groups the primary concern shouldn’t be about crime when it comes to minors, but about their safety and well-being. With Spain now the main gateway into Europe for irregular immigration from Africa, surpassing Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta, the problem of what to do with migrant children is only going to get sharper, they warn.

Under Spanish law migrant children cannot be sent back to their country against their will, if their families can’t be tracked down. When they reach 18,they are entitled to Spanish nationality, if they have been in a center for atleast two years.

Last year, the Spanish government prompted an outcry from rights groups when it started negotiating with the Moroccan government an arrangement to repatriate Moroccan children and explored possible agreements with Algeria and other African states. Many migrant children, rights groups say, flee their countries of origin because of poverty, family and social violence and terrorism.

Last month, the U.N.’s child agency highlighted the story of Sabba, a 17-year-old girl who fled her native Morocco to escape abuse. She decided at the age of 14 to get married to a 27-year-old because her farther was violent.

“At first it was good, before we got married, then my husband began to treat me badly, he would ask me for disgusting things that I did not want to do, and he would force me. It was worse than when I lived with my parents,” she says in an interview released by UNICEF.

Non-governmental organizations say aside from the issue of whether children should be returned or not to their native countries — the system for handling and protecting them in Spain is chaotic. Children are transferred haphazardly from center to center without proper planning and “overlooking the best interests of the children,” says Fundacion Raices. The NGO has demanded the assignment of independent legal guardians for migrant children to protect their legal rights.

Last year, hundreds of migrant children were moved from the southern region of Andalusia, where most migrants arrive, to Barcelona and other northern cities with little advance notice.

With reception centers packed, the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan police force, was forced to shelter temporarily as many as they could, turning police stations into makeshift dormitories. Many kids, though, were turned away. In a statement, the Catalan police union complained that officers had in effect been “blackmailed” into accommodating the minors.
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French authorities said two firefighters were killed and 47 people injured in a powerful explosion and fire apparently caused by a gas leak at a Paris bakery Saturday that blasted out windows and overturned cars.

Firefighters pulled injured victims from windows and evacuated residents as smoke billowed over Rue de Trevise in the 9th arrondissement of north-central Paris.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said that two firefighters have been killed in the bakery blast, correcting the overall figure of four dead given earlier by France’s interior minister.

Authorities said 10 people were in critical condition and 37 others less seriously injured.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told reporters at the scene “unfortunately the human toll is particularly serious.” He paid homage to the courage of rescuers who notably saved the life of one firefighter who was buried under the rubble for two and a half hours.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who was also at the scene, extended a “message of affection and solidarity” to the victims.

She said many residents and tourists have been evacuated from neighboring buildings and hotels. Paris authorities will help provide temporary accommodation, the mayor said.

Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said that the cause appears to be an accidental gas leak. He said that Paris firefighters were already at the scene to investigate a suspected gas leak at the bakery when the explosion happened.

He told The Associated Press that “the judicial police have started investigating, the scientific police as well. The origin of the explosion seems accidental. We are at the beginning of the investigation everything will be made to establish the exact origin of the explosion as soon as possible.”

Witnesses described the overwhelming sound of the blast and people trapped inside nearby buildings. Charred debris and broken glass covered the pavement around the apartment building housing the bakery, which resembled a blackened carcass.

Authorities said around 200 firefighters and police were involved in the operation.

A helicopter landed in the area to evacuate the wounded. Silver-helmeted firefighters and red firetrucks filled the street and inspected adjoining courtyards. A vehicle from gas company GRDF was stationed nearby.

Pedro Goncalves, an employee at the Hotel Mercure opposite the bakery, said he saw firefighters enter the bakery in the morning but he and his co-workers “thought maybe it’s a joke, a false alarm” and they went back to work. About an hour later, he said a blast rocked the surrounding streets.

“In the middle of nothing, I heard one big explosion and then a lot of pressure came at me (and) a lot of black smoke and glass,” he said. “And I had just enough time to get down and cover myself and protect my head.”

Goncalves said he “felt a lot of things fall on me” and that he was struck by shattered glass. He had a few cuts on his head, and spots of blood on his sweater and undershirt.

“Thank god I’m OK,” he said, saying that the blast was so powerful that he heard whistling in his ears in the aftermath. Goncalves said that he ran for the exit and then went to check on the hotel’s clients, adding that some of them had head injuries and were bleeding. He said that the hotel was “destroyed” in the blast.

Another witness told the AP that she was awakened by the blast, and feared it was another terrorist attack.

The bakery is around the corner from the Folies-Bergere theater and not far from the shopping district that includes the famed headquarters of Galeries Lafayette.

The explosion came as the French capital is on edge and under heavy security for yellow vest protests around the country.
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