Florence, 20 November (LaPresse) – Five police officers have been convicted in the second appeal trial in the investigation into the 2013 expulsion from Italy of Alma Shalabayeva and her daughter Alua, respectively the wife and daughter of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh dissident wanted by the authorities in his country. This is the decision of the judges of the Florence Court of Appeal. All were charged with kidnapping. The former heads of the mobile squad and immigration office of the Rome police headquarters, Renato Cortese and Maurizio Improta, and former police officers Luca Armeni and Francesco Stampacchia were sentenced to five years' imprisonment, while Vincenzo Tramma was sentenced to four years. The Attorney General's Office and the defence lawyers of the five police officers had requested acquittal on the grounds that “the facts do not exist”. The incident dates back to the night between 28 and 29 May 2013, when Alma Shalabayeva and her daughter were taken from their home in Rome by the police: the police were looking for her husband, but the woman was charged with possession of a false passport. Two days later, after the expulsion order was signed, mother and daughter were repatriated. The woman and her daughter then returned to Italy, and Shalabayeva was granted political asylum in April 2014. The new trial became necessary after the panel of judges of the fifth section of the Court of Cassation overturned the acquittals of the five police officers on 19 October 2023, referring the case back to Florence. Another police officer and former justice of the peace Stefania Lavore were also involved in the case, but they had already been definitively acquitted because the Perugia Public Prosecutor's Office had not appealed to the Court of Cassation on their behalf. In the first instance, the five police officers had been convicted in Perugia for kidnapping and sentenced to between four and five years in prison.