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.
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