Adnkronos Milan, 3 Feb. (Adnkronos) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has unanimously declared "inadmissible" the appeal presented by the defense of Alberto Stasi, who was definitively sentenced in 2015 to 16 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend Chiara Poggi, killed on 13 August 2007 in Garlasco (Pavia). Stasi claimed "a violation of his right to a fair trial, with regard to the principle of equality of arms", complaining that in the second appeal trial a "decisive" witness, according to the defense, had not been heard.
For the court, however, the conviction is based "on various elements of evidence" and the witness's statements to the investigators "far from being decisive in determining the criminal liability of the interested party, simply served to corroborate all the evidence against him" as stated in the sentence. In this sense, the latest decision of the Court of Assizes of Appeal not to hear the witness again "did not compromise the fairness of the criminal proceedings against the appellant. Therefore, the appeal must be rejected as manifestly unfounded".
The decision could thus put an end to one of the longest legal cases in recent years, while Stasi, now forty, has long been benefiting from external work outside the Bollate prison.