A landmark ruling. On October 7, the Council of State rewrote the "causal link." That is, the "proof" that exposure to depleted uranium or heavy metals has caused cancer. A long and tragic story. Cancer patients have faced courts and investigations for years. Many, too many, have failed. Now the wall of silence has fallen: "It is not necessary," the ruling reads, "to establish an actual causal link: the law has considered the causal link to be inherent in a typical occupational risk, thus placing the burden of proving a specific, non-work-related origin of the disease on the Administration." Thus, a path of pain and silence is reversed: the State must prove that a soldier's cancer is not related to his activity. In 2018, the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into depleted uranium reached the same conclusion. Former President Gian Piero Scanu speaks out.
So many victims, so much time.
My interpretation goes beyond the political aspect: there are no impossible battles. And no one can say, 'I'm not tackling this problem because I won't be able to solve it anyway.'"
Does that mean you heard it from politicians?
"The judiciary did what politicians refused to do. Yet they had the commission's final report, with everything explicitly and incontrovertibly stated."
And is it uncomfortable?
"He identified the causal link. Having told politicians first and then the military, I always thought this was the right conversation. We demonstrated that those working conditions objectively led to exposure to risk."
Strong conclusion. Is everyone in the commission in agreement?
"Politicians ignored our final report. They tried to obstruct the commission until the last day."
Indeed. A question of majority and opposition?
A commission of inquiry can't have a majority and a minority. Those seeking the truth cannot take partisan bias into account. The commission was so secular and impartial that the party that had expressed me at the time, the Democratic Party, tried until the very end, through the Ministry of Defense, to prevent me from presenting that report, and then, when it came time to vote, they voted halfway.
