Stephan Schmidheiny, Yale awarded asbestos billionaire called to answer, for the asbestos-related deaths of 392 people

 

REPORT of the Eternit  HEARING 13.11.2024

Eternit Bis trial. Turin, maxi-court room ‘Giuseppe Casalbore’, November the 13^th, 2024, 9 a.m.: the Assizes appeal trial begins against the Swiss entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny, called to answer, for the asbestos-related deaths of 392 people from Casale Monferrato. He is defended by lawyers Astolfo Di Amato and Guido Carlo Alleva.

An ‘endless story’, according to many.

A story of 'an extraordinary drama’, says PP Dr Sara Panelli, with her colleagues Drs Gianfranco Colace and Mariagiovanna Compare.

The Court is chaired by Dr Cristina Domaneschi, assisted by Dr Elisabetta Gallino and the six popular judges [citizens aged 30 to 65 on the electoral registry randomly selected from a list they have to apply for in their Municipality of residence- hereafter Jury Members] plus six alternate jurors.

SUMMARY

1 - Report of the President of the Court of Appeal: how the Court of Assizes motivated the sentence.

2 - Schmidheiny was aware of the serious risks of asbestos: the strategy of deception. The Neuss conference. Auls 76, the Disinformation Handbook.

3 - The diagnosis: immunohistochemistry, but not only.

4 - Five points which make it an extraordinary case: the number of people killed; Schmidheiny in the world elite of asbestos; the choice not to speak of the dangers of asbestos; the dignity of the victims; restorative justice.

5 - Restorative justice: what the defence says

6 - Next hearing.

1 - REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE ASSIZE COURT

Court Pr4esident Domaneschi, called all the parties and having seen that the defendant was absent, summarised the case, focusing on the central features of the Assizes Court verdict issued in June 2023 by the Novara Court of Assizes.

The court considered Schmidheiny's position as the effective head of Eternit: although he had no formal position in the company, several witnesses including by people with top positions in the company identified him as the person who made strategic choices and made decisions. He was the recognised head of [Italian] Eternit. That Court also deemed that, in spite of some remedial measures in the factory such as changing the manufacturing cycle from dry to wet, and the installation of dust capturing devices on certain machinery, the defendant did not adequately reduce exposure to dust, both inside and outside the work place.

With regard to the defendant's knowledge, the Novara judges, while affirming that Schmidheiny was definitely in possession of specific and in-depth scientific knowledge about the link between asbestos and mesothelioma, considered it reasonable that the defendant be convinced of the controlled use of asbestos, without stopping production; in other words, according to the Novara Court, Schmidheiny did not act with malice (wilfulness), but was guilty, due to negligence, imprudence, and inexperience considering the rules and regulations of the time.

The sentence was appealed by both the prosecution and the defence: the former alleging wilful misconduct, the latter insisting on acquittal.

At the end of the report, the speeches of the three prosecutors began: Dr Panelli and Dr Colace of the Turin Public Prosecution and Dr Mariagiovanna Compare of the Vercelli Public Prosecution (the latter seconded for this case).

2 - SCHMIDHEINY AWARE OF THE SERIOUS RISKS OF ASBESTOS

‘Read what the Neuss Conference was all about’. PP Dr Gianfranco Colace addressed the Court and Jury urging them to carefully read the proceedings of that event that he sees as key to the trial to understand how much, how and since when the defendant had been aware of the serious risks of asbestos.

Neuss (German municipality in the northern Rhineland where Dr Robock, a scientist working for Schmidheiny, had a scientific laboratory. The Neuss document illustrates the core of the defendant’s strategy of deception against the workers and the community. Indeed, during the  Neuss Meeting, Schmidheiny ‘made a true confession’, said PP Dr Colace: in three days, between 28^th  and 30^th  June 1976, the entrepreneur explained what asbestos caused to the 35 top managers of the Eternit group, whom he had summoned. ‘A true confession,’ the prosecutor insisted.  Schmidheiny said to his closest collaborators: ‘I know. I know everything’. What did he know? Colace claims that the defendant was well aware of the results of scientific and epidemiological studies that had proved the deadly danger of asbestos. He was well aware of this, according to the reconstruction set out by both PPs Dr Colace and Dr Panelli, also because the Schmidheiny family was part of the worldwide ‘cartel’ of asbestos producers.

After the first conference in Neuss, a second meeting followed in December, when ‘Auls 76’, the first handbook on how to react and what to say to journalists and others) containing ‘the Eternit group's policy and strategy to conceal the danger of asbestos’ was launched. In fact, ‘the 35 managers were “shocked” (verbatim term from the minutes of the conference) and Schmidheiny told them that the workers should not be informed lest they too be shocked. Auls, Colace insisted, dictated the behaviour and responses that must be given so that ‘the existence of our industry is not jeopardised. We must react decisively and fight with all our means'. To those who ask about the risks of asbestos, reassuring explanations must be given: ‘Asbestos as such is not dangerous. There is no danger to (workers') families as long as there is no test to show it. The existence of danger for those living near the plant can be absolutely excluded'. These phrases are contained in Auls76, which Colace calls a ‘manual of disinformation’.

So, according to the prosecutor, ‘we cannot treat Schmidheiny as a normal employer whom we reproach for being negligent! He had more knowledge than anyone. He knew'.

3 - THE CERTAINTY OF DIAGNOSIS

Is the diagnosis of mesothelioma only certain if supported by the most up-to-date markers of immunohistochemistry? So argues the defence.

The public prosecutor's office rejected this approach, with the support, stresses Public Prosecutor Dr Mariagiovanna Compare, ‘of our consultants whose high level of authority is established and widely recognised’. As she had already done in the Court of Assizes, the public prosecutor reiterates it now in the appeal: there is no doubt that immunohistochemistry is essential to ascertain mesothelioma, and there is no doubt about the validity of the current markers, but, diagnosis is made taking into account other types of tests and investigations, and above all the overall assessment of the clinical picture.

The prosecutor stated that the defence's objections should thus be rejected and reiterated the validity of all 392 diagnoses. Not only that; Dr Compare emphasised that even the less current diagnoses were carried out as scrupulously as possible by the doctors who treated the patients because the overriding interest of every diagnosis is precisely to identify the definite cause of the illness and to apply the most suitable therapies; it would be truly strange if the diagnosis held to be true and certain to treat patients were not considered correct in court.

4 - FIVE POINTS OF EXTRAORDINARINESS

A story of ‘an extraordinary drama’, as Dr Sara Panelli called it, is by definition ‘extraordinary’.

She summarised five points which made it stand out.

The number of deaths. 'There are staggering numbers in this trial: 392 deaths bearing the signature of asbestos! These people developed a malignant cancer called mesothelioma. ‘It is a very rare tumour; according to numerous epidemiological studies,’ Panelli explained, ‘the number of new cases per year, nationally, should be 60; in reality, the National Mesothelioma Registry reports 1600’. But it is Casale, with a population below 40,000, that is frightening: ‘According to estimates, we should expect 1 new case per year; therefore, in the 30 years between 1990 and 2019, 60 new cases should have been recorded. But instead? It was 661 [and over 3-fold in the district], and that is only taking certain diagnoses into account'. This means that ‘we have over 600 cases that should not have occurred’. Dr Panelli stops to catch her breath and adds with a sigh: ‘But they are dead, eh! They are people,' he punctuates, ’who should not have died! If there had not been asbestos pollution inside the factory and in the surrounding environment, those people would not have died!'

The exceptional the business position. ‘The Schmidheiny family,’ said the prosecutor, showing explanatory slides, ‘was in the elite of the “asbestos kings”. There was Johns-Manville in the United States, Turner-Newall in Great Britain (the ‘Ferodo’ brand of car brakes is one of theirs) and, in continental Europe, the Emsens and Schmidheiny families dominated. ‘The industrialists of the asbestos elite met, decided prices, policies, international strategies to manage and control the world market. They were fully informed about the outcomes of scientific studies'.

An example: Pathologist Dr Chris Wagner, from Johannesburg, had detected 33 cases of mesothelioma, both among workers in an asbestos mine in South Africa and among those living in nearby houses. Double exposure: occupational and environmental. Did the Schmidheinys know this? Why, they had bought the mines in South Africa from the British. And when was Wagner's study released? Presented in 1959 in Johannesburg and published in 1961. What was the conclusion of that study? ‘Wagner,’ Panelli explained, ‘said that there was no safe way to extract asbestos and process it. There isn't. And the asbestos kings know this, they have the first-hand scientific information!'.

Silence on the danger of asbestos. Faced with the known and proven danger (in addition to Wagner's study, Panelli cites others: Doll's, whom Turner & Newall failed to silence, and the arguments of the scientist Dr Selikoff at the famous 1964 New York Conference), ‘they chose to remain silent: neither the workers nor the people living around the plant were informed’. Obviously, if it had been known that people were dying of asbestos – dy-ing - the company would have closed down. ‘If I had known that people were dying of asbestos, like hell I would have continued working there!' a former worker testified at the first large trial.

So what? There is silence, because ‘knowledge would have brought the asbestos market to a halt’. Something, however, leaks out, articles, conferences. So what? The message is passed on that asbestos can be used safely. ‘The work carried out in the factory plants’ said Panelli, ‘are what the internal documents defined as ‘small improvements’, that is, ‘some concessions to the unions’ to ‘not wake the sleeping dogs’, which, however,' says Panelli, “have no effectiveness, and the disproportionate number of deaths at Casale proves it”.

Extraordinary dignity of the Casale victims. There is an unexpected attendance, in the court room. It is 11.35 a.m. and Dr Panelli falls silent, looks up and, in a way, gives the floor to the witness: On the screens, placed in three locations, Romana Blasotti Pavesi, the historical president of Afeva (Association of families and victims of asbestos in Casale) looms. She died last September; she was 95 years old on March the 13^th 2024. Yet there she is, very much present, her wrinkles deep, her booming voice, her words inflexible in a recording that belies nothing: ‘It is right to work, it is important and necessary, but you cannot die for work’. In the video she shakes her head and her blue eyes are sad: ‘You cannot die from work,’ she repeats. Her voice continues to shake, her face, clear and firm, does not let go.

 ‘All the witnesses,’ the prosecutor recalls, ‘were limpid, punctual, composed, imbued with sadness and suffering’ [Romana lost many members of her family]. The defence argues, in its grounds for appeal (as it had also stressed in its arguments), that those testimonies are not entirely reliable because memory at a distance of time does not preserve intact images. ‘That is not true,’ Panelli replies, ‘the loss of a loved one makes the memory everlasting’.

Finally: ‘Restorative justice’. That is: ‘An extraordinary opportunity for Schmidheiny as a man, the philanthropist he wants to be’.

It is the first time, in the long, detailed endless history of the Eternit trials, that ‘restorative justice’ enters the courtroom.

The suggestion comes from Prosecutor Dr Sara Panelli, the magistrate who, with her colleagues Gianfranco Colace and, at the time, PP Dr Raffaele Guariniello, conducted the monumental 2005 investigations for the first Eternit trial for wilful disaster.

Sara Panelli is now the prosecutor supporting the prosecution in the Eternit Bis appeal trial at the Court of Assizes, and, at her side, she has her colleague, Dr Gianfranco Colace (and, in addition, today, Dr Mariagiovanna Compare).

They know all the ins and outs of this judicial story, they have read, studied and written thousands of pages, they have consulted first-rate expert witnesses to have complex scientific studies explained to them, they have listened to hundreds of witnesses - the families of the victims and the patients themselves - and they have met the anguished eyes behind those voices. They believe there is an extensive evidentiary record ('More than incomplete material! In this trial, there is far too much material') to support the accusation against the defendant. Dr Panelli introduces a new theme, restorative justice, which, she emphasises several times as it has no bearing on the criminal sphere. It is a thing in itself. It is a choice that speaks to public spirit, a choice of maturity, a quest for reconciliation with a wounded community.

For a few minutes, the Court, maxi-Courtroom 1, suspends its role and echoes this proposal: a new way to resolve a conflict, to re-establish a human relationship with the victims and the community which has long been broken. ‘It is an additional path to the one we exercise in this trial, ‘she explains’ and it does not require any admission of responsibility. What happens is in the hands of the parties who identify an impartial mediator and agree on the time, place and manner of action'. ‘It is not up to us,’ she concludes, ‘to establish how and when to evaluate this possibility, no, but it is up to us to propose it. It is an extraordinary opportunity to follow a additional [supplementary, complementary] path'.

5 - RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: WHAT THE DEFENCE THINK ABOUT IT

The defence lawyers, asked after the hearing on Wednesday 13 November, agreed to give their opinion on ‘restorative justice’.

Lawyer Alleva. ‘With respect to this trial, I am unable to give a specific answer and I cannot/will not do so precisely out of respect for the proceedings themselves. From a general point of view, however, I have always been a great supporter of ‘restorative justice’; in terms of legal approach and from a cultural, intellectual point of view, I think it is a very important path that I hope will be used by our society, by our legal system and become part of our way of conceiving justice. The subject has now come up in this trial, I hope it can be food for thought.

Lawyer Di Amato: ‘Restorative justice has great potential, the implementation of which depends on the quality of the people called upon to administer it. Mediators in particular should have a psychological ability to get in touch with the parties, which would require appropriate training courses of which currently lack.

6 - NEXT HEARINGS

The Eternit Bis appeal trial in the Court of Appeal of Assizes resumes in Turin, in Courtroom Giuseppe Casalbore, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday November the 20^th 2024. The second hearing is expected to continue until 4.30 p.m. or a little later. The Prosecution will conclude will be completed and some of the plaintiff's lawyers may commence.

Following hearings: November 27^th ; December 4^th, 11^th and 18^th , 2024. 

https://www.silmos.it/eternit-bis-storia-umana-di-una-drammaticita-fuori-dal

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Legal remedy for migrant workers and their families in the asbestos industry and construction industry

Working and living environment of the labour in the hazardous industry: Legal remedy for migrant workers and their families in the asbestos industry and construction industry

Abstract: Almost all the hazardous industries employ migrant workers as contract and causal workers. They face hazards on a permanent basis but their job is of temporary nature in legal sense, which implies that they do not have the cover of social security. A significant number of them are undocumented workers. These workers and their families constitute a community which are perennially exposed to environmental and occupational exposures. Studies have inferred that lack of documentation and data is limiting any action to measure and address these exposure risks. The living and working conditions of migrant and non-migrant workers and their families make them vulnerable to exposures from hazardous asbestos industry and asbestos handling construction industry. In general, these workers do not have adequate legal, social and occupational protection. Their condition remains invisible to the law makers, law enforcers, planners, policy makers and public institutions concerned with public health despite the fact that WHO and ILO have recommended elimination of all kinds of asbestos, and some 70 countries have banned it.   

The need for tracking diseases and deaths resulting from particular conditions known to be caused almost exclusively by environmental and occupational exposure, has been ignored for long. It has been estimated that enviro-occupational diseases kill six times more workers (migrants and  non-migrants) than accidents. The data for migrants is yet to be disaggregated. The externalization of environmental and occupational health cost of these migrant workers makes hazardous industries like asbestos industry and construction industry, which are  poorly regulated, quite profitable. Most of the fatal environmental and occupational diseases in these industries go unreported. This holds true for the asbestos industry and construction industry. Besides the asbestos based factories, the sites of construction industry contain asbestos in many building materials. Studies have pointed out that men and women who work in the hazardous industry have higher rates of environmental and occupational diseases than the general population.

It is essential for effective preventive policy interventions to provide social security to workers, and their families who too get exposed to carcinogenic mineral fibers of asbestos.These workers end up exposing their family members when they carry the toxic fibers of asbestos on their bodies and clothes to their houses and habitations. This constitutes secondary exposure. The families of the migrant and non-migrant workers face constant risk of asbestos related diseases due to secondary exposure. Studies have shown that besides workers and consumers, wives, children, and other relatives of workers who handle asbestos or who encounter asbestos in their working environment, have higher rates of asbestos related diseases. These workers and their families are subject to poor and hazardous living and working conditions.  

This policy brief makes a case for improved data on the incidence, causes and circumstances of the diseases and deaths of migrant workers and their families in the asbestos industry. In the 29th year of Supreme Court’s landmark judgement on right health in a asbestos case, the policy brief makes a compelling case for creating a database that covers all the diseases in India which contains data on fatal diseases, disaggregated by cause of death, age and sex, work-related diseases and diseases of migrant and non-migrant workers and their families using “attributable fractions” to quantify the link between diseases like asbestosis, ovarian cancer, lung cancer mesothelioma and enviro-occupational exposure. This is required to ensure just compensation to the victims as well.

The policy brief provides an outline of the sites of exposure, modes of exposure, asbestos related diseases, environmentally unsound living conditions, preventive measures and legal remedies with specific Reference to asbestos industry and asbestos handling construction industry.

Dr. Gopal Krishna

The policy brief was presented at the Annual Research and Orientation Workshop in Kolkata. The presenter cited Al Jazeera documentary- Asbestos: The toxic mineral endangering millions in India

 

Romana Blasotti Pavesi, leader of Eternit asbestos victims wished to look into the eyes of Stephan Schmidheiny, Yale awarded asbestos billionaire

Romana Blasotti Pavesi passed away on Wednesday, September the 11th,  in the early hours of the afternoon. She was 95 years old, her last birthday had been on the 3rd of March 2024. In 1988 she was appointed president of Afled (Association of Families of Deceased Eternit Workers) which, changed its name to Afeva (Association of Families and Victims of Asbestos) in 1998. She remained president until 2015, then was made honorary president. 

She was succeeded by Beppe Manfredi (who died of mesothelioma the following year), with Giovanni Cappa as vice-president. He too suffered from the same disease, and died in 2020. Since 2016, Giuliana Busto, sister of Piercarlo Busto, aka il Pica, a well-known Casale athlete who was struck down by the same disease at the age of 33, has been president of Afeva. Romana Blasotti Pavesi was made of Commendatore della Repubblica (Order to the Merit of the Republic) for her great commitment in seeking justice and truth as president of the Associazione di familiari e vittime amianto (Afeva - Association of asbestos relatives and victims). The rosary will be this evening, Thursday 12 September, at 7pm, in Casale Monferrato, in the Parish of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In the same church, the funeral will take place tomorrow, Friday 13 September, at 2.45pm. The councillors of the ‘Casale davvero’  coalition have petitioned the mayor Emanuele Capra to proclaim a day of city mourning on the occasion of the funeral: ‘We are talking about - they write in the request, also subscribed by the city's PD (Democratic Party) - a person who was a symbol, in Italy and around the world, of the struggle against asbestos and who was able to communicate to the younger generations his intimate suffering with a spirit of resilience and a very strong charge of positivity inspired by a sublime humanity’. Mayor Capra and City Council President Giovanni Battista Filiberti welcomed the proposal: ‘A dutiful initiative that unites all political forces, associations and city associations’. Tomorrow, a minute's silence will be observed at the inauguration of the Wine Festival.

'Shame on you! We are more than you are!’ She shouted this to the whole of Italy, in those difficult and painful days when the people of Casale were faced with a terrible choice, which, at the time, I called ‘the devil's offer’ in ‘La Stampa’ . Reminiscent of childhood catechism: ‘The devil,’ the parish priest had warned us, ‘presents himself in disguise, he attracts you by showing only the beautiful and shiny side, but, beware, he will deceive you’. That offer of money, made by the main defendant in the Eternit maxi-trial to silence the voice of the municipality of Casale Monferrato, would have meant abandoning any civil action in exchange that is, forcing Municipality would no longer, or ever again, represent the community tormented by asbestos: that is why I called it the devil’s offer.  Many people were upset, Romana was upset. She was not at peace. In fact, she was very angry. ‘The Swiss, as he was known,  did a shameful thing: he behaved in the same devious way just like asbestos did killing people, by killing at random,’ she had told ‘La Stampa’ on the eve of the verdict of the court of first instance.

In the meantime, the municipality had re-evaluated the initial temptations and rejected the offer. ‘I thank Health Minister Balduzzi and that large part of the city that showed a deep civic sense,’ Romana Blasotti Pavesi said. ‘Had it been accepted, I would have personally felt ashamed to present myself to the magistrates who have worked so many years to reach this moment. Today, instead, I feel proud.

The national media, newspapers and TV stations were interested in the case. It was the late autumn of 2011. On December the 20th, journalist and anchorman Gad Lerner, had dedicated an episode to the storm unleashed by the ‘devil's offer’, with studio guests and an external link to a large group of people of Casale. Romana was in the front row. They put a microphone in front of her. Her voice thundered: ‘Shame on you!’, an attack against those who were against accepting the ‘offer/pact’. She shouted for everyone: for those who had died and for those who, while still alive, mourned their dead, and for those who, while still alive, were already suffering from mesothelioma. ‘there are more of us than of you,’ she shouted to make the air vibrate!’

Dr Daniela Degiovanni, who had shared decades of life, struggle and confidences with Romana, squeezed her arm. She confided later: ‘I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack’.

Romana’s powerful voice was one of her distinguishing features, along with her sky blue eyes, which could be as bright as aquamarine or as icy as a glacier, set in a face that all that  of suffering had turned into carved stone.

Her heart  was made of a special material, I cannot say how, nor why but it could not otherwise have withstood the blows fiercely inflicted by fate. One day she said: ‘I had even thought that my family had fallen the victim of an evil spell’. Romana buried her husband Mario, a former Eternit worker, in 1983, her sister Libera, in 1989, her nephew Enrico Malavasi (50, Libera's son), in 2003, her cousin Anna, and her daughter Maria Rosa, in 2004. For all of them, only one culprit: mesothelioma caused by asbestos. At the beginning of this year, yet another loss when her son Ottavio also predeceased her.

She had become president of Afeva, the Casale association of the families and victims of asbestos, in 1988. Mario had died and she couldn't come to terms with it: not with the mourning, a burden she carried intimately without exposing it out of modesty and reserve; what she couldn't come to terms with was that people died because of their work. Like Mario, other husbands, and wives, and children, and siblings. An unbearable injustice. They offered her the role to represent them. She thought about it for a moment, then said: ‘I don't know if I am able, but if you help me, I am ready to fight’. She did so, and remained the president for almost thirty years, with integrity and without relenting, flanked and supported by what she called her guardian angels: Bruno Pesce and Nicola Pondrano. She listened, she documented, she read a lot, she asked to know what was happening. She went where needed: to speak, to testify, to spur people on. She was especially keen to speak to youngsters: ‘We,’ he would say, ‘have come this far, and, mind you, we have done a lot. But it's not over. Now it is your turn to continue. She gave a stern warning: ‘You must fight, until we have justice!’ 

She wore the slogan ‘Eternit Justice’ proudly: printed on the three coloured (Italian) flag that flew on her terrace, in via Cavalcavia, and on the yellow badge pinned to her shirt.

The night before the hearing in which the court presided over by Giuseppe Casalbore would read the first-degree verdict of the Eternit maxi-trial, in Turin, Romana was restless. ‘I'm an optimist, but I can’t hide my level of anxiety,’ she confided, ‘I've taken a few drops of sleeping pill’. But she reacted: ‘I don't want to let fear get the better of me, I want to think that our wait for justice will be rewarded. Who knows, maybe I will finally be able to cry again'. 

She had stopped crying long before the trial, because she said her supply of tears had been completely exhausted when her daughter Maria Rosa had told her mother that she too was ‘sick like dad’. Mesothelioma. That ‘she was so beautiful Maria Rosa, and had beautiful hair. And she was so young'. When she died, she was 50 years old. Maria Rosa left behind a son Michele, who in turn had a daughter, Francesca, now 12 years old: she adored her great grandmother Romana who looked after her when she was a little child.

At the trial, Romana Blasotti Pavesi told her story which travelled the world: all over Europe, in Brazil, in the United States, in Canada, in Japan and even in the villages of the Amazon: ‘Romana you are great, Romana you are strong’ they wrote there. The world knew that emblematic story that was a copy of the pain of hundreds, thousands of other lives similarly killed by the dust, pouvri as it was known in the local dialect. The days before speaking as a witness, she could not enter the courtroom, as is the rule. So she was forced to wait outside, she could only know what was going on inside through the stories of others. A soul in pain, pacing up and down the corridors, at times sitting on the benches to give her aching legs a rest.

Then, on the day of that first verdict, 13 February 2012, she stood up and held Degio’s hand as the oncologist Daniela Degiovanni who has ‘seen’ and treated so many patients was known locally. She closed his eyes, perhaps wondering if all that could be done had been done, or perhaps recalling all the names and faces she had promised she would fight for justice.

In the years that followed there was an Appeal Trial and then the Court of Cassation in Rome. That morning she was more than anxious: Romana was restless. In the afternoon, when all that had to be said had been said, she fell silent in the long wait.

We were sitting on an uncomfortable bench, a little out of the way, side by side, in semi-darkness, speechless, our eyes pointed at the floor, stubbornly not letting ourselves be carried away by any temptation to make predictions. At a certain point of the evening, the signal came: we were called into the large and sumptuous courtroom and the Court of Cassation ruled on the statute of limitations. Everything was quashed, cancelled. An uproar followed, indignant voices. I looked for her in the confusion and found her, standing in that hidden corner we had occupied while waiting. Her gaze was bewildered and dry. ‘We fought so hard to get to this result?’ she whispered. Her son Octavius dragged her away because she was too tired. The next day, with lucidity she commented: ‘The Cassation decided this way because they don't know the history of Casale’. She meant that those judges, so far from here, do not know the constant fear of falling ill, the anguish of those who fall ill, the suffering of those who remain. And yet, she did not feel defeated: ‘We’, she said resolutely, ‘we have convinced the world that we are right’. Bruised, but not bent. One day she said to Mayor Titti Palazzetti: ‘When are we going to inaugurate the park where the factory once stood? It took so long to reclaim it, decontaminate and tear it down, now it's time to transform it'. We had been there, together, visiting the abandoned plant still standing, many years before, in an autumn dusk that made the place look even more gloomy. There was a small group of us trade unionists, former workers and family members of workers, together with Dr Luigi Mara who had asked and obtained permission to make an inspection. We wore masks and puffy white overalls; we looked like ghosts immersed in a greenish semi-darkness. Someone had a torch and shone it on the walls or against broken glass. Romana wanted to know where Mario had worked, ‘this was his shopfloor ‘explained one. She insisted on seeing the ‘Kremlin’, a bad place in the basement, where the dust felt like you were eating it, not just breathing it. ‘That's where it was,‘ said those who had worked there, “they used to send those who were considered the ”hotheads’ who had perhaps complained about the working conditions.’ And Romana looked out at a gaping hole in the floor that was lost in a black, bleak, breathless background. 

Mayor Palazzetti had promised Romana that the Eternot Park would be finished. And so it was, in September 2016, in the presence and with the blessing of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella. The park has an athletics track, lawns and plants, benches and games for children. There is also a living monument, created by the artist Gea Casolaro, the Davidia involucrata nursery: the so-called ‘handkerchief plants’, constantly cared for by a group of volunteers, the prize called the Eternot Nursery Prize awarded every year. 

Another monument, by artist Italietta Carbone, was also inaugurated: it depicts a little girl running while flying a kite, the symbol of a free soul. Everyone calls it ‘Romana's kite’: Romana, the girl from Slovenia who arrived in Casale at the age of seventeen and who, maintaining her free and indomitable spirit, shaped so much of this town’s history.

Respectful and polite at all times (she greeted and shook hands with the defenders of the Swiss defendant with sincere politeness, because ‘we are adversaries, not enemies’), she never lowered her gaze, convinced and proud of advancing a just cause. She would have liked to come face to face with the Swiss entrepreneur. ‘I would like to look him in the eye and ask him why...’. but Stephan Schmidheiny (in picture), the Yale University awarded asbestos billionaire  decided not to ever come forward. If he had done so, if he had found the courage to peer into Romana's sky blue eyes, he would have understood what his only path to salvation was and is: financing a treatment, the  cure. He could still do it, somewhere Romana would hear about it and she could finally weep with relief, freely.

by Silvana MOSSANO

Translation by Vicky Franzinetti

Also read:The asbestos victims of Eternit – in pictures

 Alumni ask Yale to revoke honorary degree 

 Lessons for India from Swiss asbestos tycoon found guilty for causing death of 392 people

 

ETERNIT APPEAL OF COURT OF ASSIZES: Silvana MOSSANO

Eternit Bis trial, act two. Specifically, this is the second act of the “Casale branch” of the Eternit Bis judicial case: the case against defendant Stephan Schmidheiny will be heard by the Court of Assize of Appeal for the second-degree assizes trial. Prosecutors reiterated the charge of the murder (omicidio doloso) of some 400 residents from the town Casale and the province of Monferrato killed by mesothelioma as a result of inhaling asbestos fiber from the Eternit plant. The Swiss businessman Schmidheiny is the last living Eternit owner. He will be 78 years old at the end of October. The Eternit Bis appeal trial will begin on Wednesday, Nov. 13, in Maxi Courtroom 1 at the Turin courthouse. The courtroom is well known to the Casale community, who attended the hearings of the so-called Eternit Maxi-trial 1 (held between December 2009 and June 2013) in which Schmidheiny and up to a point Belgian co-defendant Louis de Cartier, subsequently deceased, was tried for another crime:willful disaster caused by asbestos used in Eternit's production cycle. The Casale plant was operational for 80 years, including 10 years between 1976 and 1986, when the Swiss industrialist was at the head of the international industrial giant. Schmidheiny was convicted in the court and appeal (sentenced to 18 years) for the disaster. The Court of Cassation quashed the verdict because of the statute of limitations without acquitting the defendant.

The Turin prosecutor's office later filed the Eternit Bis case, no longer as an intentional disaster, but as voluntary manslaughter referring to individual cases of mesothelioma deaths. The proceedings were then heard as four cases according to the location of the victims. The largest one, for 392 deaths in Casale and the surrounding Monferrato towns, was heard at Vercelli Court of Assizes. Unlike the Turin Public Prosecutor, the Vercelli investigating magistrate reiterated the charge of willful murder and remanded the defendant for trial before the Novara Assize Court.

The verdict was read on June 7, 2023: the crime was downgraded from willful to unintentional to culpable, with aggravating circumstances in certain cases - of willful knowledge. The defendant was sentenced to 12 years for a number of victims, acquitted for others; other cases fell under the statute of limitations. 

Below is the link to the report on the sentencing already published by the trial court on this site.
https://www.silmos.it/schmidheiny-colpevole-inflitti-12-anni-per-plurimi-omicidi-colposi/

Both prosecutors Gianfranco Colace and Mariagiovanna Compare and defense attorneys Astolfo Di
Amato and Guido Carlo Alleva appealed the verdict.
Now comes the appeal court proceeding at the Turin Court of Appeal. In addition to Nov. 13, five
subsequent hearing dates have been set: Nov. 20 and 21, Dec. 4, 11 and 18.

[PREVIOUS REPORTS ON THE VERDICT AND GROUNDS FOR APPEAL
(links below are all to Italian and English translation)

Dec. 5, 2023 with the grounds for the judgment handed down by the Novara Assize Court (following
the judgment on June 7, 2023)
- https://www.silmos.it/in-oltre-mille-pagine-la-corte-dassise-spiega-perche-ha-condannato-schmidheiny/
- January 16, 2024 with the announcement that the judgment would be appealed

- https://www.silmos.it/eternit-bis-si-impugna-la-sentenza-di-primo-grado-il-processo-ora-va-in-corte-
dassise-dappello/

- on February 19, 2024 with two separate articles each containing the respective grounds of appeal by
the prosecutors and defense counsel.

- https://www.silmos.it/eternit-bis-anche-la-pubblica-accusa-ha-impugnato-la-sentenza-della-corte-
dassise-ecco-i-motivi/

- https://www.silmos.it/eternit-bis-ecco-perche-i-difensori-di-schmidheiny-contestano-e-impugnano-la-
sentenza-dellassise/

THE APPEALS ADDRESSED TO SCHMIDHEINY - RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Here are links to articles containing appeals to the philanthropic spirit of entrepreneur Stephan
Schmidheiny.

https://www.silmos.it/eternit-bis-la-lunga-attesa-del-verdetto-e-ora-signor-schmidheiny-compri-una-casa-
farmaceutica/

https://www.silmos.it/lettera-aperta-a-herr-stephan-schmidheiny-nella-giornata-delle-vittime-dellamianto/