BRASILIA, November 24, 2009 (AFP) - Italian ex-leftist militant leftist Cesare Battisti ended an 11-day hunger strike Tuesday at the prompting of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is studying a Supreme Court ruling authorizing Battisti's extradition to Italy.

"Mr Battisti confidently awaits President Lula's decision. In a show of trust, he called off his hunger strike on Tuesday. We've got reports that he has no health issues," Battisti's lawyer Renata Saraiva told AFP.

Found guilty in absentia for murders dating from the 1970s, Battisti, 54, was granted refugee status by Lula's government earlier this year. The Supreme Court last week ruled his status unconstitutional and granted Italy's request for his extradition.

However, the court ruling gives Lula the last word, and the signs are the president is inclined to veto the extradition -- he recently said he would abide by the Supreme Court ruling if it was "binding," which it is not.

Both Lula and Justice Minister Tarso Genro publicly pleaded with Battisti to call off his hunger strike in his jail cell these past few days.

Italy considers Battisti a "terrorist" for his membership in the Armed Proletariat for Communism, a radical and armed left-wing group that murdered several people in the 1970s.

He was found guilty in absentia of killing a prison guard, a special investigator of terrorist groups, a butcher and a jeweler targeted by the group in that period and sentenced to life in prison.

Another of Battisti's lawyers, Luis Roberto Barroso, told AFP he held an "expectation that President Lula will not extradite" the Italian.

Battisti, who made a career as a successful crime writer after renouncing his militant past, went into exile in France after escaping Italian prison in 1981.

When France changed laws protecting him and other repentant former foreign militants, he went to Rio de Janeiro in 2004 on a false passport.

He was arrested there three years later at Italy's request, and has been in detention in Brasilia since.