Giuliano Pisapia, who triumphed in a battle to control Milan in a huge upset for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is a criminal lawyer with a long history of leftist activism.

The charcoal-haired Mr Pisapia, 62, has the image of an outsider both against his centre-right rival, current mayor Letizia Moratti, and in relation to the main opposition Democratic Party whose candidate he defeated in a primary.

Serious and relaxed, he has won popularity largely on the back of growing anti-Berlusconi sentiment with the slogan: “A kind force to change Milan.”

Born on May 20, 1949, in Milan, Mr Pisapia is the son of Gian Domenico Pisapia, a famous lawyer who helped draw up Italy’s Criminal Code.

Following a Catholic upbringing, he became an activist in the far-left student movement and graduated in political sciences and law.

During his campaign, he has emphasised his stints working as a teacher in a juvenile prison and as an employee in a chemical factory.

His website says he only began practising as a lawyer at the age of 30 and witnessed “injustice, inequality and the lack of rights”.

He once defended Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan and was a lawyer for the family of Carlo Giuliani, an activist killed by an Italian police officer at a riot during the G8 meeting in Genoa in 2001.

He has also worked for US internet giant Google but his website says he continued following the cases of “normal people, marginalised people, drug addicts, the ones that don’t end up on the front pages of newspapers”.

During the years of political militancy that rocked Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Mr Pisapia had a run-in with the law – this time as a defendant.