Four defendants refuse to give evidence in Swiss landslide trial
Four of five defendents charged with manslaughter, nine years after a Swiss landslide that claimed eight lives, have refused to give evidence at trial.
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Four defendants refuse to give evidence in Swiss landslide trial
Two cantonal officials, an external geologist and two representatives of the municipality of Bregaglia are standing trial at the Maloja Regional Court.
The central question is whether a major rockslide was foreseeable at the time in 2017 – within a matter of days, weeks or months of the landslide in the southeast village of Bondo.
The prosecution has called for “an appropriate sentence” for the accused should they be found guilty.
At the start of the trial, the five defendants were questioned. The first four defendants refused to answer any of the court’s questions.
One of the representatives from the cantonal Office for Nature and the Environment made a brief statement in which he emphasised that, in 2018, he had set out his assessments in a detailed report to the Graubünden cantonal police, of which he was a co-author.
He stated that these statements were more reliable than those he could now recall from memory.
More
Life goes on a year after Bondo’s deadly mudslide
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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.
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