A group of Italian scientists went on trial yesterday for failing to predict an earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009 despite signs of increased seismic activity in the area.

The seven defendants – six scientists and one government official – are accused of manslaughter in a case that some see as an unfair indictment of science.

Prosecutors say residents around the city of L’Aquila in the mountainous Abruzzo region should have been warned to flee their homes in the days before the quake.

“We simply want justice,” L’Aquila prosecutor Alfredo Rossini told reporters.

The injured parties are asking for €50 million in damages.

The defendants were members of a panel that had met six days before the April 6 quake to assess risks after hundreds of tremors had shaken the mediaeval university city.

At that meeting, a committee analysed data from the low-magnitude tremors and determined that the activity was not a prelude to a major earthquake.

The only one of the seven defendants present at yesterday’s hearing was Bernardi De Bernardinis, a former senior official in the Civil Protection Agency.

“I think it’s important to be here because I am on my own turf. I am from Abruzzo and I owe it to the people here,” Mr Bernardinis told the court.

The other defendants include top scientists like Enzo Boschi, the former director of Italy’s prestigious National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology, as well as Claudio Eva, a physics professor at Genoa University in northern Italy.

“This is a trial which opens on very shaky foundations. You cannot put science on trial,” Alfredo Biondi, Prof. Eva’s lawyer, said. Mr Biondi said his client had told the 2009 meeting that a major earthquake could not be ruled out.

The experts are accused of giving overly reassuring information to residents who could have taken adequate protective measures if they had been properly informed.

According to the indictment, the seven are suspected “of having provided an approximate, generic and ineffective assessment of seismic activity risks as well as incomplete, imprecise and contradictory information.”