By Emma Farge<\/p>\n
GENEVA, March 9 (Reuters) – Swiss prosecutors have widened their investigation into a fatal ski bar fire that killed 41 people, mostly \u200cteenagers, adding the mayor of Crans-Montana and four other current and former \u200clocal officials to the list of suspects, a document showed.<\/p>\n
Mayor Nicolas Feraud is named as a \u200bdefendant in one of the prosecutors’ documents seen by Reuters summoning him for questioning on April 13. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Feraud, in his 50s, has previously admitted that the municipality missed multiple annual safety checks. “We are \u200cdeeply sorry. We had no \u2060indication that the checks had not been done as requested,” Feraud told reporters in January.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor’s office in the Valais canton \u2060confirmed to Reuters that new individuals had been placed under investigation in the case, which involves suspected crimes including negligent homicide, without giving details.<\/p>\n
The documents named four other past \u200band present \u200blocal officials in the Valais canton whom \u200bReuters is not identifying under \u200cSwiss privacy laws.<\/p>\n
The fire that tore through the “Le Constellation” bar on January 1 was one of the worst disasters in modern Swiss history and has strained relations with neighbouring Italy, which lost six nationals in the blaze.<\/p>\n
Many young people remain in hospital with burn injuries.<\/p>\n
The tragedy has also rattled the lucrative tourism sector. The \u200caffluent town of Crans-Montana is popular among French, \u200bItalian and American tourists and known both for \u200bits sunny, south-facing ski slopes and \u200bits golf courses.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors’ inquiries initially focused on the French bar \u200cowners, who remain under investigation. The \u200bprobe was expanded in \u200blate January to include a current and a former local official.<\/p>\n
Bar owners Jacques and Jessica Moretti have both voiced grief over the fire and said \u200bthey would cooperate with \u200cthe investigation.<\/p>\n
The case now has nine defendants who, if convicted, could face \u200ba maximum penalty of 4-1\/2 years in prison.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Emma Farge. \u200bEditing by Aidan Lewis and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Emma Farge GENEVA, March 9 (Reuters) – Swiss prosecutors have widened their investigation into a fatal ski…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3645,17153,17151,17154,41,17152,17,7098],"class_list":{"0":"post-28301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-crans-montana","9":"tag-local-officials","10":"tag-nicolas-feraud","11":"tag-ski-bar","12":"tag-swiss","13":"tag-swiss-history","14":"tag-switzerland","15":"tag-valais-canton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116199799022459963","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}