Battisti apparently tried to leave Brazil for Bolivia amid reports that Italy had recently asked the Brazilian government to revoke his asylum status and deport him to his home country, where he faces life in prison.
He was stopped by highway police on Wednesday night as he attempted to cross the Brazilian-Bolivian border in a taxi. He was detained for carrying undeclared foreign currency, according to a police statement.
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Battisti, 62, is wanted in Italy for the murders of four people in the 1970s, when he belonged to an armed Marxist group called Armed Proletarians for Communism.
He has spent some 30 years on the run after escaping from an Italian prison in 1981. He fled first to France, where he wrote a series of crime novels, before moving to Brazil in 2004 when it appeared he could face extradition to Italy.
Cesare Battisti in February 2012. Photo: Christophe Simon/AFP