Officers caused Uva death says prosector

(ANSA) - Milan, October 4 - Milan prosecutors said Tuesday crane operator Giuseppe Uva died of heart failure after being in police custody due to "stress stemming from constriction and deprivation of personal liberty".
    The Milan prosecutor's office is appealing the April acquittal of two Carabinieri officers and six policemen charged with kidnapping and criminal manslaughter in the death of Uva, who died of heart failure in a Varese hospital in June 2008 after spending part of the night in a Carabinieri barracks.
    Uva, who had a heart condition, was picked up on the street in a state of acute intoxication from pills and alcohol.
    Prosecutors said the officers should be retried for aggravated kidnapping and abuse of power as well as criminal manslaughter for the "violent, unjust, and long-lasting conduct" that led to Uva's death of cardiac arrest the following day.
    "(The officers) maliciously engaged in the physical restraint (of the detainee), committing the offense of criminal bodily harm and illegitimate deprivation of personal liberty," the prosecution said. "These... must be deemed to have caused the state of serious stress which, given a pre-existing heart ailment, led to the death of Giuseppe Uva".
    The prosecution also said the officers' acquittal earlier this year was based on a hastily reached verdict, and that the court failed to examine testimony about arguments between Uva and one of the defendants over an affair Uva allegedly had with an officer's wife.
    A lawyer for the Uva family told ANSA in 2010 that the deceased had fractures in his spinal column and lesions to the scrotum.