Thyssen: 14 years later victims still without justice

• Thyssenkrupp, tragedy 12 years ago.

  Relatives anger for denied justice

• Thyssenkrupp: Cassation rejects the appeals, just the sentences

• ThyssenKrupp, Cassation: management's 'imposing fault' for the stake

• Rogo Thyssenkrupp: reduced sentences for the six defendants.

  Victims' families: "It's not justice"

Share

06 December 2021 "We feel cheated, betrayed by a state we no longer trust". Fourteen years after the Thyssen tragedy, the pain of the families of the seven victims is still alive, as they return to ask for justice for their loved ones.

"The State must intervene so that the lowest characters who have never asked for forgiveness, and have escaped their responsibilities, are punished", is the request of the mother of Giuseppe Demasi on the occasion of the commemoration of the new memorial built inside the Monumental Cemetery of Turin.

The pain is the same as it was fourteen years ago in front of the tombstones of Antonio, Roberto, Angelo, Bruno, Rocco, Rosario and Giuseppe; children, brothers, husbands who died between 5 and 6 December in the fire of line 5 of the steel plant. "For the fourteenth consecutive year we do not think about Christmas coming, going on is impossible", explains Rosario Rodinò's sister, her eyes swollen with tears while not far away the only survivor of the tragedy, Antonio Boccuzzi, follows the ceremony with his head down .

Six final sentences handed down five years ago, including that of the German manager Herald Espenhahn,

on the violation of the "principle of due process and the right to be heard". During the Italian trial the German translation of some documents was missing. Furthermore, according to the manager, "the conviction did not provide evidence of concrete individual negligence".

After fourteen years, therefore, the request for justice from the families of the victims is still waiting. "Our drama - underlines Demasi's mother - has been forgotten, but we cannot forget: the state must intervene". "For us today there is no justice, despite the many promises of the politicians on duty", adds Rodinò's sister, who is the most combative of the families of the victims of the fire.

"That devastating fire remains a terrible wound for the city. And the pain and the demand for justice also remain strong", argues the mayor of Turin Stefano Lo Russo who, absent from the ceremony, posted the "moving memory of the city" on Facebook. to the seven victims of ThyssenKrupp, "to their families and to the many people who miss them" who "for fourteen years have lived with the pain and the sense of injustice after that tragic night". For the mayor, the new memorial, where the bodies of the seven workers were moved in recent days, is "a place of remembrance that becomes a daily reminder of what still needs to be done to make workplaces safe. In order to finally say, no more deaths at work ".  

"That night turned my life upside down, upset the lives of my friends' family members and unfortunately took the lives of some kids who had perhaps one sin: that of being born with the need to work to live. It represents a little bit. also the decline of the myth of the workplace, that is the workplace represented as a means, a system to realize a more or less great dream: the purchase of a pair of shoes or the realization of a family has turned into something completely different, it took lives away. " These are the words of Antonio Boccuzzi, the only worker who survived the ThyssenKrupp fire where seven people lost their lives in the night of 2007.

Boccuzzi recalled the events of that night in the "Inferno a Torino" podcast by Storielibere.fm to commemorate the anniversary of the massacre. The episode is part of the special episode of "Quarto Potere" by Massimiliano Coccia. Boccuzzi's memories guide listeners in the story of one of the most serious and disastrous incidents of recent decades. "In my head, in my ears there are the screams of Toni, of Giuseppe, of guys who were with me a moment before in a convivial moment inside the booth from which the line was controlled and a moment later they were very far from me , albeit nearby, engulfed in flames. In an instant hell broke out ".Boccuzzi concludes by recalling all the dimensions of the drama that took place on the night between 5 and 6 December. "There was a theft of time. Some of the boys were 26 so their whole life was stolen from them, the possibility of starting a family, the possibility of building paths. All this in function of a damn business that in front of scrolls that were turning, forgetting that within that company there were lives ".they were lives ".they were lives ".