Foreign minister Luigi Di Maio is weighing whether to ask Florida's governor to free Italian citizen Enrico 'Chico' Forte, who was arrested in the United States 1998, tried and sentenced to life in jail for murdering Australian Dale Pike.
"The foreign ministry and the Italian embassy are considering pressing Florida's governor to release Chico Forti," Di Maio told lawmakers at question-time in Italy's lower house of parliament.
"Forti has always protested his innocence," Di Maio added,
Di Maio said he was following Forte's case personally and would be discussing it with his US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.
The foreign ministry said on 20 November that the government wanted a judicial review by US authorities of Forte's conviction by a Florida court in 2000, a sentence that became final in 2010 after all his appeals failed.
If Forti's case was not reviewed in the US and he was not acquitted of Pike's murder, the government will seek to have him transferred to Italy to serve his sentence "closer to his relations", the statement said.
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