The members of the Ultima Generazione (UG - Last Generation) civil-disobedience group were found guilty of private violence and interruption of a public service.
They were sentenced to six months in prison for the protest.
But the judge accepted that the three had mitigating circumstance and the explanation of the ruling released on Tuesday said that they “certainly did not act to satisfy a personal and selfish interest, but a higher, noble and altruistic purpose, namely the protection of the environment”.
The explanation added that there is a “concrete and increasingly alarming risk” of the environment “being irreversibly compromised due to the ongoing climate change”.
The Bologna roadblock was only part of a long series of controversial acts of civil-disobedience staged by the UG to draw attention to the consequences of climate change caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions.
ANSA
