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A Swiss court has acquitted five people who were charged with homicide by negligence over a 2017 landslide that killed eight hikers and destroyed part of a village in the Swiss Alps.
The Maloja Regional Court in the southeastern canton of Graubünden cleared two cantonal employees, a forest ranger, a local official and a geologist who had faced charges over the disaster.
The landslide struck an Alpine valley near Switzerland’s border with Italy, burying four German, two Austrian and two Swiss hikers. Search and rescue efforts were abandoned after two days.
“The five defendants were acquitted by the Maloja Regional Court,” a spokesman for the court in Graubünden told AFP.
The court found no clear warning signs in the weeks before the incident that could have indicated a major natural disaster was imminent, according to Switzerland’s domestic news agency, Keystone-ATS, which covered the trial.
It also ruled that the defendants had not been negligent for failing to close hiking trails in the area considered at risk.
The hikers had been walking in small groups after setting out to climb Piz Cengalo, a 3,369-metre peak in the Bregaglia mountain range.
About four million cubic metres of rock broke away from the mountain and swept down the slope at an estimated 250 kilometres per hour, triggering the landslide that destroyed part of the nearby village of Bondo.
Authorities had warned Bondo residents about dangers on hiking trails after recent rockfalls.
An early-warning system installed after a previous rockslide in 2011 also helped authorities evacuate two mountain huts and around 100 residents from Bondo before the landslide reached the village.
