Both acquitted “because the fact does not exist”. It was not Daniele Borghi, resident in Cantù, and Alessio Molteni, from Fino Mornasco, both 27 years old, defended by the lawyers Ivana Anomali and Giuseppe Fadda, who set fire to Mount Berlinghera above Sorico, a fire that had been devastating and that had smoldered underneath the ash – before being definitively extinguished – for almost a month. The Canadairs had also risen into the sky.
According to the investigation by the forestry police, the fire had originated from a brazier near a cabin where the two boys were who were celebrating the hours before New Year’s Eve with a barbecue.
The prosecutor’s request
A barbecue which – again according to the reconstruction of the prosecution – had embers which, pushed by the wind, had started the flames which, due to the dry weather in those months, had quickly spread from the cabin where the boys were staying, owned by the grandfather of one of the two, to the rest of the mountain.
The fire broke out on 30 December 2018, requiring firefighters and civil protection for many days, including – as mentioned – Canadair and helicopters. The fire had consumed eleven houses, with three people also in hospital for burns and smoke poisoning and around fifty evacuees. Not only that, because the two young people under investigation had also been presented with a frightening bill with a huge fine of 13 and a half million euros (later reduced to “only” eight million), a figure obtained on the basis of a mathematical calculation which attributes a pecuniary sum from 118 to 593 euros for every one hundred square meters of forest area destroyed (680 hectares for the prosecution).
The defense however, in this long trial which ended yesterday, had immediately underlined – as said by the lawyer Anomali – how they were “looking for a culprit and not the culprit”, proposing alternative versions which evidently – while waiting to read the reasons – they held up.
According to the defence, that day there were more people in the mountains and not just the accused, in an area easily subject to fires as has also happened in other years and also on that day in December 2018, when three fires broke out at the same time, suggesting «a natural phenomenon of combustion».
Finally, “the brazier identified by the Forestry – concluded the lawyer Anomali – was outside the property of the suspects, and could well have been used in the previous days and was reactivated by the wind”.
Defense speech
In yesterday’s speech, the lawyer Giuseppe Fadda was also peremptory: «These boys risk a sentence of one year and eight months (as requested by the prosecutor, ed.) and also a civil sentence with those eight million euros in compensation requested, but I point out that they don’t play tennis like Sinner or football like Ronaldo. And all for a fire which, the data tells us, would have developed even if they had been in Riccione.”
Then the gloss: «We were told which was the brazier from which everything would have started but this was tens of meters away from the boys’ cabin. Then the thesis was modified, saying that an ember from their barbecue could have ended up in that brazier, carried by the wind, reactivating it. But you can’t ruin the lives of two kids if these are the conditions.” And the judge ultimately agreed with the defense, acquitting the boys.
