On the events of Piazza San Carlo in Turin, the Supreme Judges declared the criminal responsibility of the former mayor “irrevocable” for all charges, but established that the sentence must be recalculated and reduced and for this reason an appeal was ordered BIS. Chiara Appendino was sentenced to 18 months in prison in the proceedings in which, depending on the positions, the crimes of disaster, murder and injury are hypothesized: all negligent. A new appeal process was also arranged for the former head of the Municipality’s cabinet, Paolo Giordana, again for the recalculation of the sentence and a second appeal also for Maurizio Montagnese, former president of Turismo Torino. Alberto Bonzano, director of the Police Headquarters at the time of the events, was definitively acquitted with the formula “for not having committed the crime”. On 3 June 2017, during the giant screen screening of the Champions League final between Juventus and Real Madrid, a series of waves of panic among the crowd gathered in the square caused 1,500 injuries and later the death of two women.
Hanger: «I accept, but with bitterness»
“It seems to me to be a particularly severe sentence towards the mayor, who is attributed responsibility for facts that could hardly have been controlled by her”, declared the lawyer Franco Coppi, defender together with Luigi Chiappero of Appendino. The Municipality and the mayors cannot continue to be the scapegoat for everything, from public safety to smog, for which in a few hours I will have to face a new trial, declared the former mayor. «From this process – continues Appendino – it emerges that the only body held responsible for those accidents is the Municipality (and I as Mayor), while all the other institutional subjects involved in various capacities in the organization and management of public safety , or Police Headquarters and Prefecture, were dismissed or acquitted at various levels of trial. It’s an imbalance that I struggle to understand and accept. The question I ask myself is: who, given this precedent, will still be willing to make themselves available to their community as first citizen? What I hope is that a healthy reflection can be started on this point between all the political forces and the government. To date, the countless warnings from Anci and the appeal signed by thousands of mayors of all political stripes have remained unheard.” «Out of respect for those who lost their lives or were injured that evening, as well as for the institutions that I represented and represent, I have always defended myself in the trial and never from the trial. And today I accept the decision of the Supreme Court but, at the same time, I cannot hide from you a sense of bitterness”, declared the pentastellata.
