Italy's former prime minister Giuseppe Conte and the former health minister Roberto Speranza were not responsible for the alleged mismanagement of the country's first phase of the Covid pandemic, a court ruled on Wednesday.
Last March, prosecutors in Bergamo, the Lombardy province worst hit during the first wave of the virus in 2020, had placed Conte and Speranza under investigation on suspicion of "aggravated culpable epidemic" and manslaughter in connection with the government's response at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The investigation followed a preliminary inquiry that began in mid-2020 and was driven by relatives of Covid-19 victims.
Bergamo registered 6,000 excess deaths during the first wave of the virus, and according to rights groups representing families of the victims, 4,000 could have been prevented had the areas been immediately quarantined.
Italy was the first European country known to have been hit by a large outbreak of the virus, with the first case confirmed in Codogno, in southern Lombardy, on 21 February 2020. Two days later, an outbreak occurred at the hospital in Alzano Lombardo. However, unlike Codogno, which was immediately quarantined along with nine other towns in Lombardy and one in Veneto, the Alzano Lombardo hospital was reopened hours after the outbreak, while Bergamo province only went into lockdown with the entire Lombardy region two weeks later.
However, on Wednesday, the court of ministers in Brescia dismissed the case, citing how the "accusations against the pair are baseless".
"There is no evidence of the connection between the dead and the failure to extend the red zone," the court said.
"Speranza has adopted the health measures proposed to him by experts - measures which, moreover, at European level, have been among the most restrictive," wrote the judges. "The crime of culpable epidemic for improper omissive conduct is therefore unrealistic."
"I am very relieved by this decision," Speranza said on Facebook. "I really did everything possible in those terrible days to protect the health of Italians. Finally today the truth has emerged."
However, relatives of Covid victims in the province of Bergamo described the ruling as a "slap in the face".
"We are uncompromising over what has been done by the Brescia public prosecutor's office and court of ministers: the decision to dismiss the case is an insult to the memory of our relatives, yet another gag in an Italy corroded by the code of silence that we have always fought against," said members of the #Sereniesempreuniti association of victims' families.
"We are disappointed and bitter," they added, citing they will take the issue to the civil courts.