PESCARA. Six days ahead of the deadline of May 10th, the judges of the Court of Appeal of L’Aquila yesterday filed the reasons for the second degree sentence for the Rigopiano disaster, where on January 18th 2017 an avalanche destroyed the hotel leaving 29 dead under the rubble.
500 PAGE JUDGMENT
The sentence 294/2024 is now in the hands of the chancellery which is scanning the approximately 500 pages, and then proceeding with the notifications. Reasons that will have to be read with extreme attention by the interested parties and not only by the L’Aquila general prosecutor’s office, but above all by the defense of the 8 convicts who were released from the second degree: 3 more sentences than the sentence issued with the abbreviated procedure by the judge from Pescara Gianluca Sarandrea which convicted 5 of the 30 defendants who had all chosen the summary procedure during the preliminary hearing.
THE PROSECUTOR’S APPEAL
The L’Aquila Court, presided over by the judge Aldo Manfredidecided to accept the appeal of the Pescara prosecutor’s office (300 pages that aimed to overturn the first degree of judgment, which they said was too small-scale), but limited to three specific positions: that of the then prefect of Pescara, Francesco Provolo (sentenced to one year and 8 months for forgery and omission of official documents); of his chief of staff, Leonardo Bianco (sentenced for the same crimes to one year and 4 months); is that of Enrico Colangelithe official of the Municipality of Farindola (acquitted at first instance and sentenced to the same sentence as the mayor Ilario Lacchetta, i.e. 2 years and 8 months, for having committed the same crimes as the mayor). For Provolo and Bianco, the Court specified in the dispositive read by President Manfredi, which essentially anticipates the reason for that partial conviction, that due to the ideological falsity, recognized on the part of the two exponents of the Prefecture, «the causal link between the deemed conduct of ideological falsehood and the harmful events”, drawing a clear division with the other serious complaints relating to the disaster.
THE OTHER CONVICTIONS
In the first instance, in addition to Lacchetta, the then director of the Province was also convicted, Paolo D’Incecco and its official, Mauro Di Blasiofor which the Court confirmed the sentence of 3 years and 4 months each (there were also two minimum sentences of 6 months for issues related to alleged construction abuses of the structure and which had nothing to do with the tragedy).
THE ENTITIES INVOLVED
A sentence, the appeal, which pointed the finger at the Province and Municipality of Farindola, leaving the Region completely out of the picture for the failure to draw up the avalanche danger location map, and the Prefecture for emergency management and screening.
ANOTHER APPEAL
Now the prosecutor’s assessment is focused, and perhaps even more so after the second instance decision, on how the L’Aquila judges judged the role of the prefect in relation to the deaths and multiple injuries of the survivors. A technical passage on these aspects which becomes decisive for a possible and obvious appeal to the Supreme Court also by the general prosecutor’s office itself (the accusation in the courtroom was supported by the Pescara prosecutors in charge of the investigation, Anna Benigni And Andrea Papalia who requested and obtained application to L’Aquila for this appeal) and not only the defense of the convicted. The appeal to the Supreme Court, if based on technical aspects deemed well founded, could also lead to a referral to another Court of Appeal, probably that of Perugia. “It is precisely thanks to the appeal of the prosecutor’s office,” said the prosecutor Giuseppe Bellelli following the appeal sentence, – that it was possible to revisit some positions”. The head of the Pescara prosecutor’s office defined it as “an important moment in the judicial journey towards ascertaining the truth”. The Court’s decision crystallized two fundamental points which the reasons for the sentence explored in depth: the unpredictability of the avalanche event, and therefore the non-existence of the crime of negligent disaster (which will however remain the most delicate issue of the entire process and which is now consigned to Italian judicial history, given that the sentences confirmed guilt for the deaths, but not for the disaster linked to the collapse of the hotel); and then the absence of the crime of misdirection on the part of the prefectural officers alone in relation to the dramatic phone calls with requests for help from the hotel waiter Gabriele D’Angeloone of the 29 victims.
©ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
