It is not a process yet. For the history of criminal law, however, it is already a crossroads destined to forever mark the primacy between life and simulated war, between respect for the environment and an alleged "fulfillment of duty". In the hall number one of the Preliminary Hearings of the Court of Cagliari, starting next May 6, at ten thirty, the dispute is to make the veins in the wrists tremble. There is an unprecedented game to be resolved in the courtrooms of the Bel Paese, which has always aimed at the protection and safeguarding, in words, of the supreme good of the environment, of the landscape, of its natural habitat. Always and everywhere, except in the extreme tip of south-western Sardinia, that stretch of coast that the Judge of the Preliminary Investigations did not hesitate to define as "rare beauty". It is here, in this strip of Sardinian land, Capo Teulada, stretching towards the coasts of North Africa, that a titanic clash between the powers of the State takes place, between absolute values, such as the environment and life, and that of wars. simulated that, according to the accusation, devastate health and territory.
The dilemma of "duty"
There is an atavistic dilemma to be resolved that in this portion of Sardinia, segregated and forbidden, has persisted since the age of time, at least from those of Andreotti and Nixon, President of the United States of America. A dilemma that, in this first phase of the judicial procedure, was resolved on the eve of August 15th of last year with a decision as imposing as it was revolutionary by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations, Alessandra Tedde: there is no legal principle that can make an alleged "Fulfillment of duty" to the detriment of constitutionally protected values such as the environment and health.
It is forbidden to pollute
Basically, no one is authorized to pollute, devastate a territory, jeopardize the health of the military and civilians, of animals and more generally of the natural habitat, in the name and on behalf of the important function of exercising the armed forces. What is celebrated in Cagliari is much more than a Preliminary Audience, at stake is an underground clash between the military leaders, supported by the most warm-hearted politics, and the very principle of the rule of law. In practice, the Cagliari judges are called to a task that no one, in such an explicit way, had ever been destined for: deciding whether military bases are a "free zone" of laws, where rules and regulations, from environmental protection to those on safety of the military and civilians, are systematically disregarded, ignored and violated, or belong, to all intents and purposes, to the legal power of the State. To be more explicit: do the laws of the Republic also apply within the confines circumscribed by kilometers of barbed wire of military bases? Do they have the effectiveness that they would have in any other territorial context of the Italian state? The question would seem rhetorical, but reading the defense and prosecution devices, the answer is far from obvious. There are three pillar measures of this which promises to be a real judicial war, destined to keep the spotlight on on a large scale, given the weight and functions of the men called to defend themselves, for the moment from the "only" accusation of having caused an "unnamed disaster".
The good of life
A crime that the article of the penal code, in its declination, translates into a possible sentence of from one to five years in prison, up to the most serious case from three to twelve. Not a judicial jump seat, but one of those rules among the most severe, destined to strike those who, in violation of specific provisions, had ignored or worse deliberately violated the hierarchy of values to be protected, starting from the environment up to the extreme good of life Human. The clash is indeed on the level of law, but in this dispute, historical for Sardinia, elements are intertwined that will make a possible trial on this one that appears more and more like a challenge between powers, with no holds barred. Nobody can say it, let alone confirm it, but the challenge is also between state bodies, on the one hand the Ministry of Defense, on the other the Judiciary called to re-establish the reality of the facts and restore the rule of law in a part of Sardinia that , from the sixties to today, it has been violently expropriated and devastated.
Treacherous Majesty
The military leaders have always experienced the "interference" of the Judiciary and not only as a sort of "lese majesty", considering military exercises above everything and everyone, to the point of legitimizing any behavior, in disregard of the rules punctual which, especially from 2006 onwards, became more stringent and punctual. Now, with the recent decisions of the Cagliari judiciary, regardless of the outcome of the Preliminary Hearing set for tomorrow morning by President Giuseppe Pintori, that sort of state "cover" of what has happened so far inside the polygon of Capo Teulada. A sort of silence-assent that had until now "protected" the military leaders to the point of considering them above the laws. What has always been considered an inviolable area is, instead, now, in judgment, with 13 folders and 4 folders, which mark the history of an investigation as well articulated as in-depth carried out by an expert and experienced Public Prosecutor such as Emanuele Secci. An in-depth X-ray like never before on what happened in that "highly segregated" military area, with conclusions that would make the most bitter enemy of military servitude pale.
860 thousand shots
The numbers of that "unnamed" environmental disaster are to make one shudder, with figures capable of forbidding the warmongers of the last war: on the Delta peninsula of Capo Teulada, from 2008 to 2016, the stratospheric figure of 860 thousand fire shots were exploded . The effects were devastating, such as to convince the Public Prosecutor of the existence of a real disaster. The conclusions of that massive investigation, however, did not find agreement between the Public Prosecutor and the Judge for Preliminary Investigations. The PM collided with a real rubber wall of the Ministry of Defense which repeatedly stated that that "environmental devastation" was the direct consequence, expressed "in its entirety" by the Defense administration, "of the fulfillment of duty , required by law, to train in an adequate and effective way, to perform the tasks assigned to them in the best possible way, through the use of means and methods of exercise ". The prosecutor's conclusion was the request to the Judge for Preliminary Investigations to "file" the criminal proceedings against the heads of the Ministry of Defense. The twist came a few months later, when Alessandra Tedde, Judge for Preliminary Investigations, with a decision destined to remain in the annals of Cagliari's judicial authority, decides to reject the request for dismissal formulated by the investigating judge. Nineteen pages, like a real sentence, in which the rule of law is reaffirmed, the one where no one, not even the leaders of the Italian defense, has the "safe conduct" to violate. And the Judge says this with good reason, fully adopting the investigation put in place by Emanuele Secci, which provides, for the first time on a judicial level, a real map of the Teulada disaster, from the radioactive remnants of war to environmental devastation, from the permanent alteration of places and naturalistic and archaeological assets, passing through the potentially devastating consequences on human health. In short, at the end of the day, between the public prosecutor and the "preliminary" judge there is a substantial convergence on the facts: environmental disaster, to all intents and purposes, without appeal.
No "safe conduct"
On everything, except on one point: the fulfillment of duty, or rather the reason of state. Alessandra Tedde believes that the work carried out by the Public Prosecutor and the investigating bodies cannot end up on the archival shelves of the Palace of Justice, especially when the facts are as nail-biting as those that emerged during the investigation. And the Judge writes it apertis verbis : "It is on the subjective profile that the request of the Public Prosecutor is not shared, where the matter is framed under the lens of the condemnation of the fulfillment of duty by the senior army officials called into question today ". It is in substance that the judge believes that there is no "excuse for the fulfillment of duty", especially when an "excuse" arises "deriving from the international commitments undertaken by Italy on the war fronts and the need for education and training of personnel military "leading to the conviction that" the environmental value had to be considered inevitably unsuccessful and subject to sacrifice ". Even if it were true, that is, that international military obligations imposed that type of exercises, an element considered by the judge to be "unproven", this "does not imply that the performance of the activities should be exempt from all rules and regulations of precaution, attention and caution , or that, after its use, the area should not then be made subject to reclamation ». The conclusion of the Judge who brings the highest leaders of Defense to the Council Chamber of tomorrow is all in the Charter of Laws: the values of constitutional rank of Environmental Protection and Human Health can never succumb.
The Generals
For this reason, with one of the most courageous and authoritative decisions in judicial history, from tomorrow, the top leaders of the Defense will have to appear before Judge Giuseppe Pintori: Giuseppe Valotto, Chief of Staff of the Army from 2009 to 2011, Claudio Graziano , same role from 2011 to 2015, Danilo Errico, Head of the Third Department of the General Staff from 2008 to 2013, Domenico Rossi Deputy Chief of Staff from 2010 to 2013, and finally Sandro Santroni Commander of the Sardinia Region of the Army until October 2010. They all have to answer for an "unnamed disaster" with the accusation of having permanently devastated an important portion of the coast of Sardinia, that of Capo Teulada, "struck and irremediably compromised in its natural biological balance, with destructive effects and alteration of the ecosystem capable to generate harmful effects on the environment and on people ".
Process & "fire"
When President Giuseppe Pintori opens tomorrow morning the Council Chamber in Teulada and Quirra, he will shoot himself as never before, missiles and heavy artillery for one of the most impressive exercises scheduled at the last moment, directly behind the judicial appointment. No one will ever say: the leaders of the Defense, however, will try in every way to make felt in the courtrooms and not only the weight of that alleged "fulfillment of duty", to which the lawyers will cling in every way to justify the devastation by Teulada. With the papers in the possession of the judges, however, it will be difficult to pass the motion of the affections of the state. It is difficult to make an invoked military "safe conduct" prevail over the progress of radioactive contamination, nanoparticles, the destruction of promontories and the devastation of exclusive coasts. At the records of the criminal proceedings 9739/2019 there is the map of the disaster, with the evidence, the ones that nail it down.
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