Milan, 26 May (LaPresse) – Massimo Lovati, former lawyer for Andrea Sempio, has been committed for trial for defamation of the lawyers at Studio Giarda, the former lawyers of Alberto Stasi, whom he accused of the ‘conspiracy’ and ‘organised manipulation’ behind the first investigation in 2016–17 against the shop assistant from Vigevano. During the brief pre-trial hearing, the Court of Milan rejected the request by Fabrizio Gallo, Lovati’s lawyer, to suspend the proceedings “pending the trial of Sempio” for the murder of Chiara Poggi. The trial will begin after the summer, on 14 September at 9 am. For Lovati, the committal for trial was “clear” and “an inevitable course of action” from the moment he chose not to enter a plea bargain or seek alternative procedures such as summary trial or probation, he explained after the hearing. On the sidelines of the proceedings, Enrico Giarda, son of Professor Angelo Giarda, Stasi’s long-standing lawyer, to recall how the defence investigation entrusted to the SKP detective agency – which led to the collection of Sempio’s DNA in autumn 2016 – had already been the subject of a criminal investigation that was dismissed “by the Milan investigating magistrate, who explicitly stated that everything that had been done had been carried out within the bounds of propriety and the Code of Criminal Procedure”.