Overview
- Five Italians — Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, researcher Muriel Oddenino, Federico Gualtieri and Gianluca Benedetti — died during an underwater cave dive in the Maldives on 14 May, and a Maldivian military diver also died during an early recovery effort.
- The University of Genoa’s DISTAV department reactivated the academic profiles of Montefalcone and Oddenino and said its earlier silence was an act of mourning and a choice to protect students and the integrity of ongoing investigations.
- The Rome prosecutor opened an inquiry for negligent homicide and sent an international rogatory to Malé asking Maldivian authorities to send dive equipment and a recovered GoPro to Italy for forensic reconstruction.
- Autopsies ordered by the prosecutor have been carried out at Italian hospitals to determine precise causes of death and to provide evidence for the criminal probe.
- Families’ lawyers say the dives were tied to recurring academic missions and investigators are now focused on who authorized a descent to roughly 60 metres, a depth far deeper than comparable group dives, which could shape both criminal and civil responsibility.