Bergamo (Italy) (AFP)

Relatives of victims of the new coronavirus filed fifty complaints Wednesday at the Bergamo prosecutor's office in northern Italy, the first legal action of its kind in this country where the epidemic has killed nearly 34,000 people.

Accompanied by their lawyers, members of the "Truth and Justice for Victims of Covid-19" Committee, born on Facebook and with 55,000 members, submitted 50 complaints to the prosecutor's office in Bergamo, the martyred city of Lombardy and epicenter of the epidemic that struck Italy from early February to May.

"We don't want revenge, we want justice," said Stefano Fusco, 31, one of the founders of the Facebook group, whose grandfather died in March.

The complaints were filed in Bergamo because "this city is the symbol of the tragedy that affected the whole country," said Fusco.

They expose the tragedies experienced individually by each of these families (lack of information, deficient care or care, etc.) which will be examined by the prosecutor's office. The latter will then decide on possible prosecutions and, if necessary, the classification of the facts.

- Tears of blood -

Cristina Longhini, a pharmacist, lost her father Claudio, 65, who died in a hospital in Bergamo. "My father had just retired, he was in great shape when he was infected" with the new coronavirus, she says.

The emergency room initially refused to admit him on the pretext that he had no breathing difficulties, she recalls. At the Covid-19 hospital in town, there were no more beds available in intensive care.

"And when he died, they forgot to call us. I finally went to identify his body, he was barely recognizable, his mouth open, his eyes swollen out of their sockets, with tears of blood," says Ms. Longhini .

"They gave me his personal belongings, including bloody - and therefore contaminated - clothes in a garbage bag."

The local cemeteries being saturated, his coffin was transported, with a dozen others, by military truck to a destination unknown to the family, who afterwards discovered that the body had been cremated 200 km away while receiving by mail the funeral home bill.

"We demand justice for the people of Bergamo, Brescia and elsewhere," said committee chairman Luca Fusco (Stefano's father), quoted in the local press.

"We need to shed light point by point on emergency management, to understand who made the mistakes and how. The provinces of Brescia and Bergamo, in the Lombardy region, have experienced more deaths due to coronavirus only whole countries. We cannot pretend that nothing has happened, "he said.

"For the people of Bergamo, for all those who have lost a beloved person, we demand justice," pleaded AFP Laura Capella, 57, another complainant.

"We do not press charges to obtain money, we just want justice and, above all, the truth. Both go hand in hand. Money can never make us our beloved mother and father", assures Diego Federici , who also filed a complaint.

It is the first class action in Italy concerning the Covid-19.

In France, around sixty complaints have been filed in recent months against members of the government denouncing their management of the coronavirus crisis, just as in Zimbabwe doctors have filed a complaint against the authorities.

The complaints filed this Wednesday in Italy are "against X" ("unknown persons", according to local terminology). "We want to see what laws have been broken and then we will decide what to do," Fusco said.

Nearly 150 other complaints are under preparation, he said.

On Wednesday, as part of another justice investigation into the management of the pandemic by the authorities, the Bergamo prosecutor's office asked to hear Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and two of his ministers.

© 2020 AFP