Former Italian rail chief begins prison term over Viareggio disaster

Mauro Moretti began serving a five-year prison term on Thursday night after the final convictions in the Viareggio train disaster became definitive, closing one of Italy’s longest and most closely watched cases of executive liability.

The 72-year-old former head of Italy’s state railway company turned himself in to serve the sentence in Orvieto jail. His imprisonment comes nearly 17 years after the derailment and fire at Viareggio station in Tuscany that killed 32 people and injured 26.

The crash took place on June 29, 2009, when freight train No. 50325, carrying 14 tank wagons of liquefied petroleum gas, derailed and caught fire. The blast and flames devastated the Tuscan city and made the disaster one of the country’s most painful rail tragedies.

For victims’ families and prosecutors, the sentence marks more than the end of a legal file. The case has become a test of whether top managers at public transport operators can be held criminally responsible when a major infrastructure failure turns deadly. Reuters noted that prosecutors had originally sought an 18-year sentence for Moretti, who denied the charges.

The road to enforcement ran through years of appeals and revisions. In May 2025, the Florence Court of Appeal again confirmed the five-year term. In June 2026, the Court of Cassation upheld the convictions, making the punishment final and clearing the way for Moretti to enter prison.

Moretti told Corriere della Sera that he was ready to serve the sentence and said he would begin his term as an “upright” man. His remarks underscored how the Viareggio case has come to stand for more than a single conviction: it has become a measure of how slowly Italian justice can move, and how rarely criminal liability reaches the top of a transport system after a catastrophe.