Head of Italy disaster body quits in protest at quake ruling

ROME (AFP) - The head of Italy's top disaster body resigned in protest on Tuesday after seven of its members were sentenced to six years in jail for manslaughter for underestimating the risks of a deadly 2009 earthquake.

Mr Luciano Maiami told the ANSA news agency he had quit as head of the Major Risks Committee because "there aren't the conditions to work serenely", a day after the watershed ruling that sent shockwaves through the international scientific community.

Mr Maiami, one of Italy's top physicists and a former head of Cern in Geneva, criticised the verdict delivered by the court in L'Aquila in central Italy on Monday as "a big mistake".

"These are professionals who spoke in good faith and were by no means motivated by personal interests, they had always said that it is not possible to predict an earthquake," he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.