MILAN - The Prosecutors of Milan have asked that Severino Antinori, a controversial fertility doctor, be given nine years in prison, judicial sources say. He has been accused of kidnapping a woman and stealing her ovules, as well as extortion. 

 Dr. Antinori has been known since the 1990s for successfully helping a 63 year-old woman to give birth, a first at the time.

 He was arrested in May 2016 on the charge of forcibly removing eggs from a 24 year-old Spanish woman at his clinic in Milan. The woman accused him of taking her mobile phone, and forcibly immobilising and anaesthetising her, before harvesting her ovules. The Italian media at the time also reported that this may not have been an isolated case.

 In Oct. of 2016, the judge of Milan said that the woman “falsely accused, through a formal complaint-lawsuit” Antinori of mistreating her, and ordered prosecutors to present charges of slander against the woman. In February, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for extortion but was acquitted of a charge of the sale of gametes.

 In the most recent court proceedings, the prosecutors Maura Ripamonti and Leonardo Lesti have asked for a nine-year sentence, and that extenuating circumstances for the doctor not be recognised “for his leading role in the affair and because he is the protagonist of serious crimes.”

 Dr. Antinori has maintained that the prosecutors are ignoring the truth, and said that Ripamonti was a “persecutor of an innocent man, flying in the face of blatant evidence.” He added that “luckily I have faith in the magistrate and in the right section of Milan’s penal court, in the appeals court and in the (Supreme) Court of Cassation,” according to news sources.