Italian Prosecutor Seeks Life for US Men Charged With Murder

US Finnegan Lee Elder (L), talks with his lawyer Renato Borzone (C), as he arrives with Gabriel Natale-Hjorth (R), for a hearing in the trial where they are accused of slaying the Carabinieri paramilitary police officer Mario Cerciello Rega, while on vacation in Italy in July 2019, in Rome, on March 6, 2021. Alessandra Tarantino/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

ROME—An Italian prosecutor on Saturday requested life in prison for two young American men charged with slaying an Italian police officer in central Rome.

Prosecutor Maria Sabina Calabretta asked the court to find the two defendants — Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20 — guilty and to impose Italy’s maximum sentence for the July 26, 2019, stabbing death of Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega. Calabretta called the attack “disproportionate and deadly.”