Italys disaster chief resigns after sentence of colleagues

Luciano Maiami, the head of the Major Risks Committee, and several top scientists resigned after seven of the bodys members were found guilty on Monday of manslaughter for underestimating the devastating LAquila quake which killed 309 people in 2009.Maiami, one of Italys top physicists and a former head of top particle physics laboratory Cern in Geneva, described the verdict as a big mistake and said he had resigned because there arent the conditions to work serenely.The verdict has provoked deep anger and concern in the global science community, with top experts warning of the repercussions and saying their colleagues had been used as scapegoats.The seven defendants are appealing the ruling by the court in the medieval town of LAquila in central Italy. Under the Italian justice system, they remain free until they have exhausted two avenues of appeal.These are professionals who spoke in good faith and were by no means motivated by personal interests, they had always said that it is not possible to predict an earthquake, Maiami told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.It is impossible to produce serious, professional and disinterested advice under this mad judicial and media pressure. This sort of thing doesnt happen anywhere else in the world, he said.This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state. All seven defendants were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in LAquila on March 31, 2009 -- six days before the 6.3-magnitude quake devastated the region, killing 309 people and leaving thousands homeless. One of the seven, Mauro Dolce, resigned as head of the Civil Protections seismic risk office on Tuesday, and the rest of the committee were preparing to follow suit, according to Maiami.Committee member Roberto Vinci from the National Research Council said he had resigned to show support for those who, perhaps having reacted with a certain naivety and certainly under great pressure, have been accused of manslaughter.Michael Halpern of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said that without the right to speak freely, they would be vulnerable to scapegoating and persecution.Scientists need to be able to share what they know -- and admit what they do not know -- without the fear of being held criminally responsible should their predictions not hold up, he said in a blog.The appeal hearings are due to take place in the final months of 2013, according to Marcello Melandri, lawyer for Enzo Bosci, the head of Italys national geophysics institute (INGV) at the time of the quake. We will wait to read the grounds for the verdict and then the defence lawyers will work on the appeal, hoping for a better outcome, he said.I am still incredulous, he said of judge Marco Bellis decision to give the scientists an even harsher sentence than the four years called for by the prosecutor.The defendants were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros (almost $12 million) in damages to survivors.