It had never happened before. From 1956 to today no one had ever dared so much. A real free zone, without laws and without controls, without rules, where everything was allowed. A perennial abuse ever since the NATO vans dragged away the last inhabitants of the Teulada Plain, wiping out every sign of life in that land torn away from agriculture and sheep farming. Bombs and missiles, tanks and mortars have passed on those rocky slopes between Cala Zafferano and Sa Portedda, between Porto Scudo and Nuraghe Maxinas.

Ripped off at a high price

A charming promontory gutted day after day, seven thousand hectares of nature reduced to a wasteland for crawlers transformed into devastators without borders, capable of razing Nuragic civilization and environmental heritage to the ground, as if Sardinia were a land to be devastated without a reason. Of course, the State paid a lot to buy those fields between Teulada and S. Anna Arresi. It is said that against a market value of ten thousand lire per hectare, the statesmen sent to the island to buy everything and everyone, also paid two hundred thousand lire. They wanted that piece of Sardinia at all costs, to practice warfare, they said, despite the fact that the exact opposite was written in the Constitution.

Gun consumer

Over the years, that inter-force range, co-managed by NATO and company, has become a real consumer of weapons, armored and war vehicles, thousand-pound bombs and missiles loaded with all kinds of devastation. A continuous cycle arsenal to be destroyed, not so much to practice warfare, as to subsidize the ravenous arms industry at a high price. This is demonstrated by the fact that for decades the territory has continued to be devastated with conceptually old-fashioned means, with military techniques such as the "Ride of the Valkyries" or the "Normandy landings", just so as not to abandon the expensive war productions, Italian and beyond.

Courageous judges

Sixty-seven years after that armed robbery, carried out with the sound of money and with the forced expulsion of the most riotous peasants, the history of Teulada today writes an unexpected, almost impossible chapter, which seemed destined to founder in the old adage according to which the Ministry of Difesa has the license to do whatever it wants, without having to respond to state laws or worse, ignoring the constitutional values of justice and respect for the environment. It took a Sardinian judge, Giuseppe Pintori, President of the Section of Judges for Preliminary Investigations and the Preliminary Hearing to overturn a story that seemed already written. Referring five Defense and Army Chiefs of Staff to trial, with an exemplary decision, he not only overturned all the predictions of the day before, but confirmed that the Court of Cagliari has no reverential fear towards the powerful Generals of Rome.

Criminal offense: disaster

And after all it was another Sardinian magistrate, Maria Alessandra Tedde, Judge for preliminary investigations, in August 2021, who asked the Public Prosecutor Emanuele Secci to formulate the heaviest charge in Italian military history against the Generals: Disaster " environment”, that of art. 434 of the Criminal Code. An explicit "ratio legis", a rule that places under judgment «the endangerment of an indeterminate number of people, due to the potential and aptitude of aggressive conduct to project its effects beyond the threatened or affected individuals, protected not as such, but as belonging to the community". A provision that seems written for the Teulada case.

Measurable devastation

A crime as heavy as it is "measurable": in devastated hectares, in promontories severed by cyclopean explosions, by nuclear radiation scattered throughout the land, in bombs and missiles scattered everywhere, up to the severed and bombed nuraghes. The Public Prosecutor Emanuele Secci has investigated for years, he has collected a mountain of evidence capable of nailing ministers and military leaders, delivering a report to the Judges for preliminary investigations that could not end up on the file shelves without defendants. The perennial "game" played out by the Ministry of Defense has always been the same, from the parliamentary commissions of inquiry to the courtrooms: confusing responsibilities, pulverizing them until they are imperceptible and uninvestigatable.

Smokey "game".

However, the "toy" of imperceptible responsibilities stumbled on the steps of Piazza Repubblica, the Court of Cagliari. The defense leaders of those years of devastation are now all on trial. In jargon from the past, very powerful Generals "ended up on the dock", from star-men who passed without a fight from the top military to those of the war industry, up to graduates who became undersecretaries of Defense with Renzi's centre-left and now ended up in act as consultants to the current minister of Meloni's centre-right government. The judges' reasoning was clear and linear, which can be summarized with a simple question: who, if not them?

Who but them

Who, if not the military leaders. After all, how could they not know what was happening inside that range, which they themselves considered the beating heart of their war-training activities? Could they not know how much, how and what they were shooting in that area? Could they have been unaware that it was an area subject to stringent environmental restrictions, with the maximum protection of habitats protected at community level? According to Judge Maria Alessandra Tedde and the President of the First Section of Judges for Preliminary Investigations and Preliminary Hearing Giuseppe Pintori they could not have not known. One fact, however, is certain: the process is a decisive step to clarify things, to identify those responsible for the disaster. In fact, there can be no doubts about one element: the disaster has not only been certified by consultants and experts, but, above all, it is still there, in full view of all.

Radioactive evidence

What greater environmental disaster could have been recorded, with very serious risks for soldiers and civilians, if not the discovery of radioactive areas inside the Polygon? All indisputable, documented and certified elements. What about those islets demolished by bombs and missiles, with those shots "against the coast" so dear to military reports? The Generals will certainly be able to defend themselves against the accusations, but they will not be able to cling to the ancient plague of "I didn't know" or "it didn't depend on me". One of the few consolidated rules within a serious military organization is precisely the "chain of command", there is no escaping from there.

Powerful Gratian

And the most powerful of all cannot escape the question, that General Claudio Graziano, called to answer for an "unnamed disaster" in the proscenium of Teulada, for having been Chief of Staff of the Army from 2011 to 2015, or someone who, according to what the Judge writes, was able to decide. It is he who covers the wider time frame relating to the indictments. A key man appointed, immediately after his resignation from the Defense, very powerful Chairman of the Board of Directors of the largest factory of warships and submarines, Fincantieri.

From defense to weapons

A transition, from Defense to the war industry, which took place when his indictment had not yet been decided. Whoever designated him, and he himself, probably relied on the consolidated "impunity" of what happens inside the military polygons of Sardinia. This time, however, they didn't reckon with Giuseppe Pintori, the judge who committed him to trial, together with four other graduates. Among them also Domenico Rossi, former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, adviser to the current Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto despite a past as undersecretary in the Renzi and Gentiloni governments and a disastrous participation in the primaries of the Democratic Party for the Mayor of Rome, just a thousand votes. They will answer, Graziano and Rossi, together with Danilo Errico, Giuseppe Vallotto and Sandro Sandroni, all stars of rank. The Teulada trial now, however, opens up unprecedented scenarios for military "slavery". But that's another chapter.

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