GENOA, Italy: An Italian court on July 16 sentenced the former head of motorway operator Autostrade per l'Italia, Giovanni Castellucci, to 12 years in prison for his role in the 2018 disaster in which a bridge collapsed near Genoa, killing 43 people.

Castellucci was among 57 people on trial over the collapse of the Morandi bridge, which caused vehicles to fall onto warehouses and a riverbed below during a summer storm.

In total, 32 people were convicted, with other sentences of up to 11 years. Another 25 people were either acquitted or cleared due to the statute of limitations.

There was silence in the courtroom as presiding judge Paolo Lepri read out the verdict. Around 400 relatives of the victims, along with lawyers, journalists and members of the public, were present.

Some relatives hugged and cried, while others said they needed time to understand the decision.

Egle Possetti, a spokesperson for the victims who lost her sister, brother-in-law and her sister's two children in the tragedy, said they needed to better understand the ruling because there were many defendants involved.

The case became both an effort to establish responsibility for the disaster and a symbol of the slow pace of justice in complex Italian criminal cases.

Castellucci, who was also chief executive of Atlantia, the controlling shareholder of Autostrade at the time, was found guilty of being involved in multiple cases of manslaughter due to negligence.

He is already in prison, serving a six-year sentence for another fatal incident in 2013 on a viaduct in southern Italy, and was not in court to hear the verdict.

His lawyer, Giovanni Paolo Accinni, said the ruling was a defeat for the truth about what happened. He added that the decision was part of a pattern that had already led to Castellucci's imprisonment, and argued that blaming the chief executive was not the solution. He said they would continue to fight to prove Castellucci's innocence.

Under Italian law, the first ruling can be appealed at least twice.

The collapse of the 51-year-old Morandi bridge, just before a national holiday, shocked Italy and led to years of investigations into how the country manages and maintains its aging infrastructure.

A 50-meter-high section of the bridge collapsed while up to 35 vehicles were crossing it.

The disaster also led to a dispute between Atlantia, controlled by the Benetton family, and the government at the time, which ended with the sale of Atlantia's controlling stake in Autostrade.

Prosecutors said the collapse was caused by years of poor maintenance, ignored warning signs and delayed safety work. They argued that important repairs were postponed while profits continued to be made and distributed.

Defense lawyers rejected this, saying the disaster was caused by a design flaw in the bridge's stay cable number nine, which failed. They argued that no maintenance program could have prevented the tragedy.