A third appeal for five officers

Italy's Court of Cassation has ordered a third appeal, which the court calls an appello-ter, for five police officers in the Shalabayeva case. The defendants include Renato Cortese, who led Rome's Squadra mobile in 2013, and Maurizio Improta, then head of the immigration office. The judges accepted requests put forward by the deputy prosecutor general Alessandro Cimmino. The five were sentenced to four years in prison by the Florence appeals court in November 2025, and the Cassation ruling partly overturns those convictions.

What the retrial covers

For all five defendants the statute of limitations has run out on the kidnapping charge linked to Alma Shalabayeva, the wife of Kazakh dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov. The charge concerning their daughter Alua goes back to a new appeal before a different section of the Florence appeals court. Prosecutors at the Cassation argued that the officers could not be treated as one undifferentiated group, and the judges were pushed to assess each position separately. The distinction between the responsibilities of the Squadra mobile and those of the immigration office had already been raised by the prosecutors at a hearing on 20 October 2026. Besides Cortese and Improta, the defendants include Francesco Stampacchia, Luca Armeni and Vincenzo Tramma.

How the case began in 2013

In May 2013, police searched a villa in Casal Palocco, in Rome, looking for Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former Kazakh minister. They found his wife, Alma Shalabayeva, who presented a passport that police considered false. Sources give the date as 28 May in one case and 29 May in another, so the exact day is left open here. The expulsion order led to Alma Shalabayeva and six-year-old Alua being flown back to Kazakhstan on a special flight. The expulsion order was later revoked, the two returned to Italy, and Alma Shalabayeva was granted political asylum in 2014. The investigation was opened in Rome and later passed to Perugia, which handled the first trial.

Thirteen years of proceedings

The Cassation decision comes more than thirteen years after the events. The case has passed through a first trial in Perugia, an acquittal on appeal that the Cassation later annulled, and the Florence convictions of November 2025. Because the Cassation has ordered a further appeal rather than issuing a final verdict, none of the five officers has a definitive conviction. Il Giornale's commentary on the ruling asks how long a trial can last before its duration becomes an injustice in itself. The retrial before the Florence appeals court will decide the officers' individual positions on the charge concerning the daughter, the only charge still open.