Lawyers working with the families of the victims of the lethal Swiss ski resort New Year’s blaze wish to upgrade the case into a murder prosecution.
The announcement on Wednesday, June 10th was prompted by new evidence that the bar’s owners used text messages to discuss the fire risks inside their venue, the Le Constellation bar.
With 41 people killed and 115 injured in the disaster, Jessica and Jacques Moretti already face charges including manslaughter by negligence and arson by negligence. Lawyers formally submitted the request for murder charges after investigating magistrates in Sion cross-examined the couple last week, where the pair were confronted with messages from a workplace WhatsApp group in 2019. In these, Jessica Moretti warns staff to take care with sparklers which could ignite the carpet, sofas, or sound-insulating ceiling foam, potentially torching the entire bar.
Grimly, the messages seem to anticipate the fire investigators’ key theory, namely that the blaze began in the basement, when fireworks (sparklers) in the necks of champagne bottles were held too close to the soundproof foam stuck to the ceiling.
Under Swiss criminal law, “possible intent” exists when a perpetrator
considers the commission of the offence to be possible but acts anyway, because he accepts this result if it occurs… even if he judges it to be undesirable and does not wish it.
Lawyers acting for the families of victims say that charge should now be murder with possible intent, rather than negligence but the couple’s lawyers have dismissed this as “nonsense.”
The case continues.
