Mauro Moretti, former CEO of Ferrovie dello Stato and Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, was sentenced to 5 years in the process of appeal bis is preferably used for Viareggio train massacre from 13 years ago. In the first appeal Moretti had been sentenced to 7 years, while in this new trial ordered by the Cassation the Attorney General had asked for 6 years and 9 months.
Unlike in the previous degrees of judgment, in this process Moretti has not renounced to make use of the prescription. The Court of Appeal of Florence, therefore, declared the crime of manslaughter extinguished by statute of limitationsfollowing the instructions of the Supreme Court.
Moretti's conviction therefore concerns other charges: manslaughter train wreck, fire and manslaughter. The Court excluded the fault of the omitted provision of the reduction of the speed of the freight trains, one of the negligent profiles on which the Cassation had asked to evaluate the merits.
The Viareggio massacre of 2009
The train crash occurred on the night of 29 June of the 2009 and provoked the death of 32 people, including three children aged two, three and five, killed in a tanker explosion. After four trials, the debate is not yet concluded, because almost certainly there will be a new appeal to the Supreme Court and this time it will really be the last act of this affair.
The comment of Moretti's lawyer
“The sentence is very disappointing – he commented the lawyer Ambra Giovene, who defended Moretti – A 5-year sentence for a trial without evidence is truly a theorem and we can only regret this. It betrays an interpretation of this story that is not the real one. We will read the reasons. We expected quite the opposite: we believed that the Cassation ruling offered much wider scope for interpretation than those defined today”.
The judgments on the other former managers of the Railways
In the same proceeding they were other managers also convicted: Michele Mario Elia (ex CEO of Rfi) and Vincenzo Soprano (ex CEO of Trenitalia) at 4 years, 2 months and 20 days; Mario Castaldo (director of the Trenitalia Cargo Division) at 4 years old. Those are lower sentences than what the Attorney General requires. On the other hand, two other managers of the railways were acquitted, namely Emilio Maestrini (Trenitalia) and Francesco Favo (Rfi).
The comment of the lawyer of the families of the victims
Satisfied with the sentence Tiziano Nicoletti, one of the lawyers of the families of the victims: "A satisfactory verdict because it confirmed the condemnation of the leaders of the State Railways including Moretti and Elia and the serious responsibilities for the omissions on the control of the carriages arriving from abroad".
