Italy's ex-safety chief faces homicide probe over quake

ROME: Italian justice has begun investigating ex-civil security chief Guido Bertolaso, who could face involuntary homicide charges of under-estimating the impending dangers ahead of a killer quake in 2009.

The probe, announced Tuesday, was opened after a complaint from a lawyer in L'Aquila where some 300 people died in the quake that devastated the capital of Abruzzo, east of Rome.

The lawyer in question got hold of a recording of a compromising telephone conversation purportedly between Bertolaso and a regional advisor.

In the conversation, which took place on March 30, 2009, a week before the L'Aquila quake, Bertolaso spoke of a meeting of a national committee on major risks, charged with evaluating whether an earthquake might be in the offing and the need to prepare those at risk.

Bertolaso, according to the transcript of the phone calls, calls the meeting a "media event" organised "not because we have any fears or are concerned but to reassure the people." (AFP)