Florence, 20 Oct. (LaPresse) – The judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Florence, in a ruling filed today, has ordered the dismissal of the criminal proceedings relating to the disappearance of Mia Kataleya Chicllo Alvarez, known as Kata, the Peruvian girl who went missing on 10 June 2023 from the former Hotel Astor in Florence, which at the time was occupied by dozens of foreign families. The proceedings concerned the only two suspects in the alleged abduction of the minor for the purpose of extortion, Argenis Abel Alvarez Vasquez and Marlon Edgar Chicllo Romero, Kata’s maternal and paternal uncles respectively. The judge granted the public prosecutor’s request to dismiss the case, noting that the evidence gathered during the preliminary investigations did not allow for a reasonable prospect of a conviction against the two men. The investigating judge noted that the investigative activities carried out, whilst numerous, had not made it possible to reconstruct with sufficient certainty the circumstances of the child’s abduction and removal, nor to identify specific evidence capable of attributing the alleged offences to the suspects. The various investigative hypotheses examined did not yield sufficiently solid evidence to support the charges in court. In a statement, the president of the Court of Florence, Angelo Antonio Pezzuti, explains that “the decision to dismiss the case therefore concludes the proceedings in their current evidential form, based on the available evidence, without it being reasonably foreseeable, at this stage, that a conviction will be handed down” and that the decree “also refers to Article 414 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows the investigation to be reopened upon a reasoned request by the Public Prosecutor, should new investigative requirements arise and it be reasonably foreseeable that new sources of evidence will be identified – either on their own or in conjunction with those already obtained – such as to justify the bringing of criminal proceedings”, but that “the reference to the possibility of reopening the investigation clarifies the scope of the order and does not constitute an advance assessment of the possible acquisition of new evidence”.
The ‘Little Kata’ case: investigating magistrate dismisses proceedings against the aunt and uncle
Florence, 20 Oct. (LaPresse) – The judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Florence, in a ruling filed today, has ordered the dismissal of the criminal proceedings relating to the disappearance of Mia Kataleya Chicllo Alvarez, known as Kata, the Peruvian girl who went missing on 10 June 2023 from the former Hotel Astor in Florence, which at the time was occupied by dozens of foreign families. The proceedings concerned the only two suspects in the alleged abduction of the minor for the purpose of extortion, Argenis Abel Alvarez Vasquez and Marlon Edgar Chicllo Romero, Kata’s maternal and paternal uncles respectively. The judge granted the public prosecutor’s request to dismiss the case, noting that the evidence gathered during the preliminary investigations did not allow for a reasonable prospect of a conviction against the two men. The investigating judge noted that the investigative activities carried out, whilst numerous, had not made it possible to reconstruct with sufficient certainty the circumstances of the child’s abduction and removal, nor to identify specific evidence capable of attributing the alleged offences to the suspects. The various investigative hypotheses examined did not yield sufficiently solid evidence to support the charges in court. In a statement, the president of the Court of Florence, Angelo Antonio Pezzuti, explains that “the decision to dismiss the case therefore concludes the proceedings in their current evidential form, based on the available evidence, without it being reasonably foreseeable, at this stage, that a conviction will be handed down” and that the decree “also refers to Article 414 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allows the investigation to be reopened upon a reasoned request by the Public Prosecutor, should new investigative requirements arise and it be reasonably foreseeable that new sources of evidence will be identified – either on their own or in conjunction with those already obtained – such as to justify the bringing of criminal proceedings”, but that “the reference to the possibility of reopening the investigation clarifies the scope of the order and does not constitute an advance assessment of the possible acquisition of new evidence”.