Viareggio massacre: the Court of Cassation upholds the convictions. Former CEO Moretti is to go to prison
The convictions of a further 10 defendants – including former executives and technical staff from the companies involved in the management and maintenance of the derailed train – have also been upheld
The sentences handed down to the defendants in the trial for the Viareggio train disaster of 29 June 2009, in which 32 people lost their lives and over a hundred were injured. The judges of the Fourth Criminal Section of the Court of Cassation, upholding the requests of the Attorney General’s Office of the Supreme Court, have dismissed the appeals lodged by the defendants against the third-instance appeal judgement which had confirmed, amongst other things, the five-year prison sentence for Mauro Moretti, former chief executive of Ferrovie dello Stato and Rete Ferroviaria Italiana.
Now that the verdict has become final for Moretti, he will be sent to prison. The convictions of a further 10 defendants – including former executives and technicians from the companies involved in the management and maintenance of the derailed train – have also been confirmed.
The Ter appeal proceedings arose from a decision by the Court of Cassation which, in January 2024, had upheld the criminal liability of the defendants but ordered a new appeal hearing limited to the determination of the sentences. The central issue was the correct application of general mitigating circumstances: in the 2022 judgement, these had been granted at the minimum level of one-ninth, whilst the defence had sought the maximum reduction, amounting to one-third of the sentence. The Florence Court of Appeal had rejected the defendants’ requests and upheld the sentences. “In order to ensure that the penalties are as commensurate as possible with the exceptional gravity of the offences, now that a final determination has been reached, this panel considers that the reduction to be granted to each defendant cannot exceed one-ninth of the base sentence determined for each of the defendants”, the judges had written in the grounds for the judgement handed down in May a year ago by the Florence Court of Appeal in the Ter trial. This evening, the Court of Cassation confirmed the ruling.
