MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Italian seismic experts sentenced to jail for inadequate warning triggers global controversy

L’Aquila remains in ruins despite the earthquake that killed 300 people remains in ruins

Six scientists and a government official were sentenced to six years in prison for manslaughter by an Italian court on Monday for failing to give adequate warning of an earthquake that killed more than 300 people in L'Aquila in 2009.

The seven, all members of a body called the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were accused of negligence and malpractice in evaluating the danger and keeping the central city informed of the risks.

The case has drawn condemnation from international bodies including the American Geophysical Union, which said the risk of litigation may deter scientists from advising governments or even working in seismology and seismic risk assessments.

“The issue here is about miscommunication of science, and we should not be putting responsible scientists who gave measured, scientifically accurate information in prison,” Richard Walters of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences said.

“This sets a very dangerous precedent and I fear it will discourage other scientists from offering their advice on natural hazards and trying to help society in this way.”

The scientists, Franco Barberi, Enzo Boschi, Giulio Selvaggi, Gian Michele Calvi, Claudio Eva and Mauro Dolce as well as Bernardo De Bernardis - a senior official in the Civil Protection Authority - were convicted of criminal manslaughter and causing criminal injury.

The 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck L'Aquila, in the Abruzzo region, at 3:32 a.m. on April 6, wrecking tens of thousands of buildings, injuring more than 1,000 people and killing 308.

At the heart of the case was the question of whether the government-appointed experts gave an overly reassuring picture of the risk facing the town, which contained many ancient and fragile buildings and which had already been partially destroyed three times by earthquakes over centuries.

The case focused in particular on a series of low-level tremors that hit the region in the months preceding the earthquake and which prosecutors said should have warned experts not to underestimate the risk of a major shock.

Eva's lawyer Alfredo Biondi said the decision was “wrong in both fact and law” but the verdict, delivered in a tiny improvised court room in an industrial zone outside the still-wrecked city centre, was welcomed by relatives of the victims.

More than three years later, much of the once-beautiful medieval city is still in ruins and thousands of people have been unable to return to their homes. Defence lawyers said earthquakes could not be predicted and even if they could, nothing could be done to prevent them.