Crans Montana, mayor also under investigation

 The mayor of the municipality of Crans-Montana is accused of:1) culpable personal injury;
2) endangering the lives of others through direct malice;
3) culpable arson:
4) a series of violations of the responsibilities and duties imposed by law on municipalities, in particular the law on protection against fire and natural elements.

A possible breakthrough in the investigative relationship between Swiss and Italian investigators investigating the Constellation discobar massacre is expected at the end of March.

The first operational meeting between the prosecutors of Rome and those of the Canton of Valais will take place between 23 and 27 March.

Precisely in a week when Additional Prosecutor General Catherine Seppey, in charge of the file, intends to restart the interrogations by hearing, on Wednesday 25 March, Rozerin Ozkaytan, the Constellation photographer who was injured and released from hospital in recent weeks.

'I hope that the Swiss public prosecutor will speed up the investigation because we cannot have a long time, given the seriousness of the drama, and then also the widening of the investigation to ascertain the municipal responsibilities, of the mayor and the security councillor, and an ad hoc assessment of the management of the rescue operations, which were very deficient,' explains lawyer Fabrizio Ventimiglia, lawyer for the family of one of the Italian girls who was injured.

The mission to Switzerland should allow the Roman investigators to look into the corpulent dossier of the investigation: they will be able to select useful documents for the Italian investigation and for their subsequent formal transmission, which will still have to be endorsed by Sion for each individual document.

This will be the first concrete step in that path of 'enhanced cooperation' that was defined on 19 February in Bern at the summit between Rome's Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi and Prosecutor General Béatrice Pilloud.

At the moment, the file opened in Rome is against unknown persons and proceedings are in progress for culpable disaster, culpable homicide and injury.

The Italo-Swiss operational meeting expected in a fortnight' time will therefore be a very delicate step to test the real willingness of the Swiss magistrates. In the meantime, the constitution of the joint investigation team, which had been requested by the Italia government, seems to be an increasingly remote hypothesis. So much so that Italy's ambassador to Switzerland Gian Lorenzo Cornado, who was recalled to Rome on 24 January, has still not returned to Berne.

A reassessment of the Italian position could depend precisely on the room for manoeuvre that the Valais Public Prosecutor's Office shows it is willing to grant to its Roman colleagues.