Italy on Thursday offered to cooperate with Kerala police for the ballistic examination of the weapons of the two arrested marines, suspected to have shot and killed two Indian fishermen, but said it should be in their presence.

''We will cooperate for the ballistic examination, but we should also be present. Hope it will bring out justice,'' Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Stefan de Mistura said.

A Kollam court on February 21 had permitted police to search the Italian ship Enrica Lexie to seize the arms allegedly used by the two onboard naval guards to shoot and kill two Indian fishermen.

Talking to reporters after meeting the two Marines at the CISF Guest House at Wellington here this morning, Mistura said the firing incident took place in international waters.

"We stick to our stand that the vessel was in international waters when the incident took place. It was 22.5 nautical miles of Kollam coast,'' he said.

The visiting Minister said he felt sad for the families of the dead fishermen. "We expressed regret."

The marines have been arrested on the charge of killing the two Indian fishermen on Feb 15 off Kollam coast. Italy has been maintaining that they opened fire suspecting the fishermen's boat to be pirates.

Meanwhile, the two guards were today taken to Kollam for being produced before a court at the end of their three-day police custody.

Latore Massimiliano and Salvatore Girone were taken in separate vehicles by police to Kollam, a nearly three hours journey from here. They have to be produced in court by 4 pm.

On the legal front, the petition filed by Italian Consul General in Mumbai Gian Paolo Cutillo and the two accused seeking to quash the FIR against them will come up before the Kerala High Court on Thursday.

Marines to stay in custody till Mar 1

The Kerala high court on Thursday rejected a plea to stay the proceedings against the two Italian marines involved in the ship firing incident last week, while the police custody of the two have been extended by seven days by a magistrate's court in Kollam.

The high court also issued notices to the Centre and the state government for their views on Italy’s plea to quash the FIR registered against two of its naval personnel in the ship-firing incident.

The high court asked counsel appearing for the petitioners, “Why can't you co operate with the investigation?” Justice P. S. Gopinathan made the query during the hearing of the petition filed by Italian consul general Giampaolo Citillio and the two accused in the case against Massimilano Latorre, chief master sergeant of the San Marco regiment and sergeant Salvatore Girone.

The high court also asked assistant solicitor general P Parameshwaran Nair to advise the central government to sit together with the Italian authority and discuss the matter.

Appearing for the petitioners, Supreme Court lawyer Sunil Dutt sought a directive to stay further proceedings against the two marines, but the court rejected the plea and posted the case to Tuesday next.

Director general of prosecution Asaf Ali opposed the arguments of Sunil Dutt and reiterated that the incident happened in Indian waters. But, the petitioners again took the stand that “the incident took place in the international waters and the case cannot be taken up in India.”

According to them, Kerala Police has "no authority to conduct the investigations." The DGP termed the incident as brutal and contended that the weapons used for the killing had not been seized yet. He sought time till Tuesday for submitting the details of the case.

The ASG contended that no interim order should be passed till the investigations were over. In Kollam, the first class judicial magistrate Doney Thomas Varghese extended the police custody of the two marines — Latorre Massimillano and Salvatore Girone — till March 1.

The prosecution pleaded for an extension of the custody for seven days, for further investigations.
When the maries were first produced, the court had sent them to police custody for three days till February 23.

Making the plea for an extension of the custody period, the prosecution stated that the probe team couldn't get into the ship, since it was still on the outer sea, and it would take time to bring it back to the port for the search of the weapons. As part of the investigations, the marines also would have to be taken to the ship.

The defense requested that Italian representatives be permitted to accompany the probe team into the ship. On a prosecution nod, the court allowed it.

Assistant public prosecutor Manjula Itty appeared for the prosecution. B Raman Pillai, Sunil Maheswaran Pillai and Abhixit Singh appeared for
the defense. Italian military attaché Franco Favre, Italian Naval Officer and Italian counsel general Gian Paolo Cutillo were also present.

The marines were brought to the court with heavy police protection. They were taken back to the CISF guest house in Kochi by 5: 15 pm.