Italian fertility guru Severino Antinori was on Thursday taken to prison in Rome from a hospital in the capital, following his arrest last week for allegedly removing egss from a 24-year-old Spanish nurse's ovaries without her consent.
The controversial surgeon, dubbed the 'grandmother's obstetrician' for helping women in their sixties to have children, will be questioned by prosecutors at Regina Coeli jail on Friday, in the presence of his lawyers.
Antinori's defence team have requested Antinori's release from custody and said they have submitted documentation to an Italian court including forms signed by the Spanish woman allegedly proving she chose to enter an egg donation programme voluntarily.
Antonori, who is under investigation for kidnap and causing grievous bodily harm, alleges he's the victim of a 'witchunt' and denies he forcibly removed the woman's eggs at his clinic in April the northern city of Milan.
The 70-year-old surgeon, who began a hunger-strike against his "unjust" arrest was taken ill and re-admitted to Rome's Santo Spirito hospital on Wednesday after a Milan court ordered he be held in jail.
He was put under house arrest in Rome last Friday for allegedly removing eight of the Spanish woman's eggs against her will. A day later he was rushed to hospital after complaining of chest pains which he blamed on the stress of his arrest.
He returned home on Sunday, but breached the conditions of his house arrest, giving a series of phone interviews with media, including one alleging that the nurse, a naturalised Spanish citizen originally from Morocco, was a member of the Islamic State jihadist group.
The woman had fabricated the egg theft allegations against him after he discovered her allegiance to IS, Antinori sensationally claimed in the interview with public broadcaster RAI on Tuesday.
"She was a member of IS. She invented this whole thing because I found her out,"Antinori told RAI's Lombardy local news bulletin.
The nurses alleges she was tricked by Antinori, who invited her to come and work for him at his clinic in Milan, told her she had an ovarian cyst and gave her with a course of hormone injections, allegedly to treat the cyst when in fact he was stimulating her ovaries in order to harvest her eggs.
