General Claudio Graziano, president of Fincantiere who committed suicide in his home in Rome, was involved in the investigation by the Cagliari Prosecutor’s Office into the effects of years of exercises in the Teulada military range. For him and 4 other generals, all former chiefs of staff – Giuseppe Valotto, Danilo Errico, Domenico Rossi and Sandro Santroni – the accusation is of environmental disaster and multiple manslaughter.
On the first charge, all five defendants were sent to trial, while the second was followed by a request for dismissal by prosecutor Emanuele Secci, the second requested by him since the beginning of the investigation.
During the investigations, the Prosecutor’s Office had ascertained the state of devastation of the Delta Peninsula, an area of three square kilometers where, from 2008 to 2016, 860 thousand training shots were fired, with 11,875 missiles, equal to 556 tons of war material. But at the end of the investigation, prosecutor Secci asked for it to be dismissed, but was denied by the investigating judge who instead ordered compulsory charges.
During the preliminary hearing, the same prosecutor, who for 7 years investigated the deaths in the area of the military base and the pollution, had considered that he did not have the elements to be able to stand a charge in court, urging the acquittal of the five general: according to the magistrate, the causal link between the exercises and deaths from cancer is missing, just as the elements to support a hypothesis of an environmental disaster are missing – both in fact and in law. Now after a year and a half of further investigations into the deaths, the Prosecutor’s Office has once again asked the investigating judge for the dismissal with the same reasons.
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