Five officials face negligent homicide trial in Pontresina over fatal 2017 Bondo rockslide

Charges and upcoming trial in Pontresina

On Monday, five defendants will stand trial in Pontresina over a fatal rockslide in Val Bregaglia that killed eight hikers. The Graubünden Public Prosecutor's Office has charged two geologists, a forestry engineer, a forester, and former Bregaglia mayor Anna Giacometti with multiple counts of negligent homicide. One geologist and the forestry engineer were employed by the Graubünden Cantonal Office for Forest and Natural Hazards at the time of the collapse. Prosecutors state that the accused misjudged slope instability indicators in the days leading up to the disaster and failed to close municipal hiking trails. Specific penalty demands will be presented during the main trial proceedings, while the legal presumption of innocence applies to all defendants.

The 2017 Piz Cengalo collapse

The rockslide occurred on 23 August 2017 on the northeast flank of Piz Cengalo above the village of Bondo. Around 3 million cubic meters of rock broke away at an elevation of 3,000 meters above sea level. The falling mass swept through a large portion of an adjacent small glacier, transforming the debris into a high-velocity mud and rock torrent that surged into the valley. The slide buried a 1.5 to 2 kilometer section of the Val Bondasca hiking path beneath 15 to 20 meters of rubble. Eight hikers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland lost their lives in the debris.

Legal path to the courtroom

The path to trial involved multiple court decisions after regional authorities initially dropped the case. In 2019, the Graubünden Public Prosecutor's Office dismissed proceedings, ruling that a rockfall of that scale was not foreseeable. The Graubünden Cantonal Court upheld that dismissal in 2020 by rejecting an appeal filed by the victims' surviving relatives. The families then appealed to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, which ruled the cantonal assessment insufficient to shelve the case and ordered it reopened in 2021. A subsequent independent geological evaluation led the public prosecutor to reverse course and file criminal indictments against the five officials.

Rarity of natural hazard prosecutions

Criminal proceedings against communal and cantonal authorities for natural disaster management remain uncommon in Swiss legal practice. Mountain accident specialist lawyer Rahel Müller noted that Swiss courts have examined similar questions of foreseeability in only two previous incidents.

These are two cases whose legal question is comparable to that of Bondo, because both cases deal with the foreseeability of natural events.

The first precedent occurred after a 1998 rockfall in the Taubenlochschlucht near Biel that killed an eight-year-old child and injured three others, resulting in a December 2003 negligent homicide conviction for a trail association leader. The second followed a 1999 avalanche in Evolène that killed 12 people, leading to 2005 conditional convictions for the local mayor and safety director. As Müller explained, criminal liability remains difficult to establish in court cases involving Alpine hazards.

There are only a few fatal accidents related to natural hazards where the courts have affirmed criminal liability.