Cucchi defendants all cleared in appeal

(ANSA) Rome, October 31 - An appeal court Friday overturned the conviction of four doctors and a hospital staff member accused of killing Stefano Cucchi, a draughtsman who died in Rome's Pertini hospital in 2009.
    A lower court last year also had acquitted three warders and three nurses in the case and the acquittal also was upheld by the Rome appeal court while the manslaughter conviction against the five found guilty last year was quashed.
    Cucchi died after being arrested on a drug charge and according to the lower court his death was caused by a "severe shortage of food and liquids". An autopsy shortly after Cucchi's death found he was severely dehydrated and also had two broken vertebrae and internal organ damage. The appeal court decision however absolved the consultant in charge of the prison ward of the Pertini hospital, Aldo Fierro, and the doctors Stefania Corbi, Flaminia Bruno, Luigi De Marchis Preite, Silvia Di Carlo and Rosita Caponetti.
    Also cleared were nurses Giuseppe Flauto, Elvira Martelli and Domenico Pepe as well as prison guards Nicola Minichini, Corrado Santantonio and Antonio Domenici.
    It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors would lodge a further appeal meaning the case would be heard a third time in the Court of Cassation, Italy's Supreme Court.
    "Together with my colleagues I have been accused of barbarity, of having clubbed and beaten Stefano Cucchi," Minichini told the court earlier, "we were compared to ruthless nazis. I would not wish anyone to go through what we have undergone. But I, we are innocent".
    Cucchi's relatives said the sentence was "absurd" and they would appeal to the supreme Court of Cassation.