(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 11 - Italy on Saturday asked a Congolese military court to hand down prison time rather than the death penalty for six men charged in the February 2021 murder of Italian Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Luca Attanasio in an ambush by militia in the east of the African country.
    Layers acting for Italy said that in the case of the five defendants present in court and one who is a fugitive from justice, Rome has long campaigned around the world against the death penalty requested by prosecutors.
    The death penalty is often handed down in the DRC in cases of national security but it has not been carried out for 20 years and it is systematically commuted to life imprisonment.
    On February 22 last, the second anniversary of Attanasio's slaying, Premier Giorgia Meloni said that Italian institutions were determined to establish the truth of what happened.
    "Two years have passed since the attack in which the Italian Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo Luca Attanasio, the Carabiniere Vittorio Iacovacci and the World Food Programme driver Mustapha Milambo lost their lives," Meloni said on the anniversary of the February 22, 2021 ambush of the WFP convoy in North Kivu.
    "Remembering Luca Attanasio and Vittorio Iacovacci is not only an institutional duty, but an act of justice and love.
    "Towards their families and loved ones, who more than anyone else mourn their passing and who can count on the support of the institutions to know the truth about those tragic events".
    The military tribunal into the incident opened in Kinshasha in October.
    The six defendants are members of one of the militias that have been running rampage since regional wars in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (ANSA).