Judge Casalbore is deciding, today (29/03), about the claims raised by the defendant's lawyers for a nullification of the crime and about the eventual lack of jurisdiction of the Tribunal of Turin. The judge rejects all this requests and the Eternit trial goes on in Torino. Then, he set a schedule for the next hearing: finally the first witnesses will come to testify. The debate can start after four months of preliminary matters.

Giuseppe Casalbore spent two hours reading the writ that order to continue with the trial in Torino, rejecting the defendant's lawyers request, and voted down to the other claims raised by the defence during the last session. Here the decisions, point by point.

Jurisdiction: the trial goes on even if the judge consider himself not able, currently, to decide about the competency of the Tribunal of Turin. In any case, Genova wouldn't be the competent tribunal for this trial, as requested by the defence. The judge will eventually decide about this lack of jurisdiction of Torino in case some objective fact and clear evidence will come to knowledge during the debate of the next public hearings.

The right of a correct defence will be guaranteed during the next phase of debate and cross-examination, when it will allow to the defendant's lawyers also to call their experts. If some fails has been made during the probationary phase, this just means that the prosecutor's arguments will be weak and the defence will have an easy task in counter-interrogating the experts.

The claim of nullify the arraignment act: the Italian crime legislation doesn't forecasts a nullification for the cases requested by the defendant's lawyers. The defence's claims are not accepted.

Finally, after seven hearings and four months of lawsuit, it's time for the acquisition of the evidences and the appointment of witnesses and experts . The parties present their evidences and the judge will decide what is acceptable and what it's not acceptable. The admitted papers and evidences will be the starting point of the debate that will also start during the next public hearing, on April 12th, 2010 with the interrogation of the first 5 depositions. Easter's holidays stand in the middle and we still have two weeks before the trial liven up.

But the first to testimony will be just the "generic witnesses", the ones that all the parties would, no doubt, listen and cross-examine: Bruno Pesce and Nicola Pondrano (the coordinators of the Victim's Association of Casale Monferrato) among them. For the others witnesses and experts, the list of the ones named by the parties still have to be accepted by the judge.

Casalbore complained himself about the long list of witnesses presented by the parties: 1800 people named by the defence, around 100 by the prosecutor and one hundred more by the plaintiff's lawyers.

Good Easter, the trial it's finally starting.

(By Asbestos Victims Families Casale, Asbestos in the dock, 30/03/2010)