ラクイラ地震判決に抗議して、要職を辞任する人たちがいる一方、「これは「科学者」の裁判ではない」と言い、「「地震の危険はないから、家でリラックスしてワインを飲んでいて大丈夫」という発言までが出てしまった無責任さにある」ということを言っている人もいるようです。
Aljazeera (2012.10.23 )
Italy disaster chief quits over quake row
http://www.amoitalia.com/orvieto/index.html
The head of Italy's top disaster body has resigned in protest after seven of the organisation's members were sentenced to six years in jail for manslaughter for underestimating the risks of a deadly 2009 earthquake.
Luciano Maiami told Italy's ANSA news agency that he had quit as head of the Major Risks Committee because "there aren't the conditions to work serenely," a day after the watershed ruling that sent shockwaves through the international scientific community.
The seven defendants are appealing Monday's ruling by the court in the medieval town of L'Aquila in central Italy, an area devastated by the April 2009 earthquake that killed 309 people.
Maiami, one of Italy's top physicists and a former head of the top partical physics laboratory Cern in Geneva, criticised the verdict as "a big mistake".
"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," he 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 doesn't happen anywhere else in the world.
"This is the end of scientists giving consultations to the state."
All seven defendants were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in L'Aquila on March 31, 2009 - six days before the 6.3-magnitude quake devastated the region that left thousands homeless.
Under the Italian justice system, the seven remain free until they have used two chances to appeal the verdict, but the ruling has sparked outrage among the world's scientific community which says it has set a dangerous legal precedent.
'Incredulous'
Maiami said the committee's deputy head was also set to resign.
Michael Halpern of the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists said that without the right to speak freely and independently, they become 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 seven Italians will appeal their sentence in hearings set for the final months of 2013, according to Marcello Melandri, lawyer for Enzo Bosci, who was the head of Italy's national geophysics institute at the time of the earthquake.
"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, I keep thinking about it and ask myself why," he said, referring to judge Marco Belli's decision to give the scientists a harsher sentence than called for by the prosecutor.
The defendants were also ordered to pay more than $12m in damages to survivors.
'No danger'
In L'Aquila and the surrounding towns, where rubble from crumbled houses and churches still lies in vast piles in off-limit zones, survivors and families of those killed said they were shocked by the global reaction.
"There has not been any trial against science," said Anna Bonomi, spokeswoman for the 3and32 survivors' group which has campaigned for justice.
"If anything, there has been a trial against a system of power," she said, referring to the widely-held belief that the government had conjured up a media-friendly reassuring message to calm skittish citizens before the earthquake.
"They may convince Italians [that the trial was unfair] but they will not convince us residents: they played with people's lives."
The government committee met after a series of small tremors in the preceding weeks had sown panic among local inhabitants - particularly after a resident began making worrying unofficial earthquake predictions.
Italy's top seismologists were called in to evaluate the situation and the-then deputy director of the Civil Protection agency Bernardo De Bernardinis gave news interviews saying the seismic activity in L'Aquila posed "no danger".
He advised local residents to relax with a glass of wine. About 120,000 people were affected by the earthquake, which destroyed the city's historic centre and medieval churches as well as surrounding villages.
確かに、この「リラックスしてワインを」という言葉を信じ安心しきっていた人には、許しがたいことでしょうが、「逃げた方が良い」と言われて、皆それを信じて逃げたのでしょうか。
911のテロ事件のとき 世界貿易センタービルから一旦逃避しようと一階まで降りた人たちが、「外は危険なので留まるように」というアナウンスを聞き部屋に戻り、助かったはずの命も失われました。
このときのアナウンスがなければ犠牲者は減っていたと思いますが、「「リラックスしてワインを」と言われて留まったせいで多くが亡くなった」というのは、八つ当たり的過ぎるのではないでしょうか？（そして、建築基準が甘い国、ラクイラ市の責任回避に使われる。）
「戦時中、パルチザンが活動していないでドイツ軍の言うことを聞いていれば、村が襲われ、多くの人が命を失わなくても済んだはずだ」という裁判がイタリアであったということを、昔何かで読みました。
この裁判の判決がどうなったのかまではわからないのですが、この裁判も、地震の裁判も、犠牲者、その親族の心情が察しられるばかりに、理性だけを押し付けるのも気が引けます。
しかし、理性的な判断を司法が行わないことが許されるとしたら（特に今回のラクイラ地裁など、ラクイラ市の有力者の力が大分影響していることでしょう）、その国の未来は危ういと思えます。
