Court rejects request to reopen Stasi

(ANSA) - Milan, January 24 - The Brescia appeals court on Tuesday rejected a request to review Alberto Stasi's conviction for the murder of his girlfriend Chiara Poggi in August 2007. Stasi is serving a 16-year jail term for the murder, which was committed in the Italian town of Garlasco.
    Stasi's lawyers filed the petition in December on the basis of a private investigation that had allegedly found that the DNA under Poggi's nails was of one of her brother's friends.
    The appeals court found the request groundless. The Pavia prosecutor's office recently upheld a request to reopen the case filed by Stasi's mother.
    Poggi's brother's friend, Andrea Sempio, has been put under investigation in a fresh probe, sources said, after traces of his DNA were - according to an analysis ordered by the defense team - found under the victim's nails.
    The Poggi family lawyers, Gian Luigi Tizzoni and Francesco Compagna, said in a statement that Italy's supreme Court of Cassation acknowledged that expert analysis during the trial regarding DNA under the victim's fingernails showed that "it wasn't possible to make any consideration on the topic of identity or of exclusion, as the defendant's defense team has acknowledged several times".
    Tizzoni and Compagna also specified that the current Milan general prosecutor hasn't accepted as "founded" Stasi's mother's request for review, and that any request for review would come under the authority of judiciary officials in nearby Brescia.