Process to be redone for asbestos deaths at the Palermo shipyard. The Court of Cassation annulled the verdict Court of Appeal of the Sicilian capital which had acquitted the defendants, convicted at first instance, for the death of 39 workers which occurred due to breathing asbestos fibers during their work at the Fincantieri plant in Palermo. Now a new appeal process will have to take place which will have to take note of the principles established by the Supreme Court.
«Justice done»
The decision came yesterday evening. For the general secretary of Fiom CGIL Palermo and Sicily, Francesco Foti “Justice has been done.” Fiom and many of the victims’ families are assisted in the trial by the lawyer Fabio Lanfranca, for whom “the historical truth has been re-established”. After the conviction at first instance, the defendants were acquitted on appeal, considering that the exposure to asbestos at the factory in Palermo at the beginning of the 1980s. “The acquittal came despite numerous testimonies from shipyard workers and the reconstruction carried out by the experts attesting to the copious use of asbestos in Palermo at least until the mid-1990s”, explain Fiom.
The Court of Cassation, therefore, considered the decision of the Court of Appeal of Palermo to be erroneous, annulling with postponement the acquittal ruling. «Justice has been done this time too – says Fiom secretary Francesco Foti – Unfortunately the workers will never come back to life, but today all these deaths and also the union have been justified, always at the forefront of this tough battle. And this must be a warning because, apart from asbestos, there continue to be three deaths a day in Italy due to accidents at work linked to the lack of safety, protective devices, adequate training and laws that really, in a short time , shedding light and clarity, condemn companies that respect neither workers nor safety.”
«The workers of the Palermo shipyard died not due to an unforeseeable accident – underlines the lawyer Lanfranca -, but because they were forced for decades by their employer to work daily with asbestos, without any protection and without having received any information on the dangers of the material supplied to them and which slowly killed them”.
