By Emilio Parodi
GENOA, Italy, July 16 (Reuters) - An Italian court on Thursday sentenced the former head of Italian motorway operator Autostrade per l'Italia to 12 years in prison for his role in a disaster that killed 43 people when a bridge collapsed near the city of Genoa in 2018.
Giovanni Castellucci was among 57 people on trial over the collapse of the Morandi bridge which sent vehicles plunging onto warehouses and a riverbed beneath the flyover during a summer storm.
Thirty-two people were convicted in all, with the other sentences spanning up to 11 years, while 25 were either acquitted or cleared because of the statute of limitations.
There was silence as presiding judge Paolo Lepri read out the verdict in a courtroom packed with 400 relatives of the victims, lawyers, journalists and members of the public.
Some relatives hugged each other and cried but others said they needed time to digest the outcome.
"We need to better understand the ruling; there are a large number of defendants involved," said Egle Possetti, a spokesperson for the victims, who lost her sister, brother-in-law and her sister's two children in the tragedy.
The case had become both a search for accountability for the disaster and a symbol of the slow pace of justice in complex Italian criminal proceedings.
CASTELLUCCI TO APPEAL
Castellucci, who also served as CEO of Atlantia, the controlling shareholder in Autostrade at the time, was convicted of complicity in multiple counts of manslaughter through negligence.
Castellucci is already in prison, serving a six-year sentence over another fatal incident in 2013 on a viaduct in southern Italy, and was not in court to hear the verdict.
"This is a defeat for the truth of what happened," his lawyer Giovanni Paolo Accinni said.
"It is part of a trend that has already led to Castellucci being sent to prison. The criminalisation of the chief executive cannot be the solution. We will continue to fight for his innocence."
Under the Italian legal system, the first instance ruling can be appealed at least twice.
VEHICLES PLUNGE FROM BROKEN BRIDGE
The collapse of the then 51-year-old Morandi bridge on the eve of a national holiday shocked Italy and triggered years of investigations into the management and maintenance of its ageing infrastructure.
A 50-metre (160-foot) high section of the bridge collapsed with as many as 35 vehicles driving across it.
The disaster caused a dispute between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and the then government that ended with the sale of Atlantia's controlling stake in Autostrade.
Prosecutors argue that years of inadequate maintenance, ignored warning signs and delayed safety work contributed to the collapse, alleging that vital work was postponed while profits continued to be generated and distributed.
Defence lawyers reject that theory. They argue that the disaster was caused by an original design defect in the bridge's stay cable number nine, the one that failed, and that no maintenance programme could have prevented the tragedy.
(Reporting by Emilio ParodiWriting by Keith Weir; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Alexandra Hudson)
