When Grief Demands What Justice Cannot Give

Forty-one people will never come home.

I've been sitting with that number for days now, rolling my wheelchair to the window of my small apartment in Tirana, watching the February rain streak down the glass like the tears I imagine are still falling in Switzerland, in Italy, in homes scattered across a continent. Forty-one. The figure feels abstract until you try to picture forty-one empty chairs at a dinner table. Forty-one phone numbers that will never light up a screen again. Forty-one futures—erased in smoke and fire on a winter night at Crans-Montana.

The images from that night are seared into collective memory now. Orange flames roaring against a dark Alpine sky. Crowds huddled in the cold, their breath visible, their faces lit by destruction. The acrid smell of burning wood and something worse—something no one wants to name. These weren't soldiers. They weren't risk-takers. They were young people who walked into a public venue expecting music, laughter, the ordinary magic of a night out.

They trusted that "public" meant "safe."

The Detonator

When the Swiss authorities released the Moretti couple on bail—the venue owners under investigation—something cracked open. Alberto Mittone, writing for Doppiozero on 2 February 2026, called it a "detonator" for emotions that had been building in silence. Italy's Prime Minister recalled the ambassador from Switzerland. A government minister spoke of "disrespect for the victims." The political machinery lurched into motion, and suddenly the conversation shifted from what happened to who was paying—or not paying—for it.

I understand the fury. Believe me, I do.

I've spent my life in a body that doesn't cooperate, navigating systems that often feel indifferent to individual suffering. When I was five years old, my family left Albania so I could receive medical treatment in Italy. I've had surgeries. I've had devices implanted in my brain and later removed. I know what it's like to want someone to be held accountable for pain that feels too large to carry alone.

But here's what I've also learned: the language of pain and the language of law are not the same.

Two Languages, One Courtroom

No one has been found guilty. The Morettis haven't been convicted. Under Swiss law (and Italian law, for that matter), preventive detention serves specific purposes: preventing the accused from tampering with evidence, fleeing the country, or committing new crimes. It's not meant to be a preview of punishment. It's not meant to satisfy the public's hunger for visible suffering.

This distinction matters, even when it hurts.

In Italy, bail doesn't exist. The system removed it in 1988 because it was discriminatory—those with money could buy their way out while the poor stayed locked up. Switzerland kept the institution, and so the Morettis walked free after posting a sum determined by judges. Where did that money come from? Mittone raises uncomfortable questions. Could those funds have been spent making the venue safer instead? Were resources hoarded while fire exits remained inadequate?

These are fair questions. But they belong to the investigation, not to the streets.

The Trial We Build Outside the Courtroom

Here's what happens after tragedies of this magnitude—what the behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman called "background noise." Society reconstructs the event. We discuss it in living rooms, in TV studios, on social media. We form our own "proof," our own verdicts. The emotional participation is intense, and pain takes the lead.

I've watched this pattern repeat. The Turin Cinema Statuto fire. The Costa Concordia disaster. The Viareggio railway explosion. The collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa. Each time, the public trial runs parallel to the legal one, and the public trial is faster, louder, and far less interested in presumption of innocence.

The victims' families want justice to move quickly, without obstacles.

Who can blame them?

Their children are gone. Their siblings, their partners, their friends—gone. The smell of smoke still clings to their memories. They want the system to acknowledge their agony, to move at the speed of grief, to punish without delay. But law isn't therapy. The courtroom isn't a confessional. As the Italian writer Italo Calvino once suggested, good judgement requires "emotional distance"—the ability to weigh evidence without being crushed by sorrow.

This sounds cold. I know.

The Weight of the Scales

Justice is symbolised by a blindfolded woman holding scales. We've seen the image a thousand times. But have we really thought about what it means? The blindfold isn't about ignorance. It's about impartiality. The scales aren't about speed. They're about balance. And balance takes time.

The great twentieth-century jurist Hans Kelsen wrote something that has stayed with me: "Justice is not a sentiment, but a function of the legal order." When sentiment replaces function, law stops being law. It becomes something else—revenge dressed in robes, emotion wearing a wig.

This doesn't mean victims don't matter. They matter profoundly.

But respecting victims means something harder than matching their anger. It means maintaining the boundaries of the rule of law even when those boundaries feel like obstacles. It means distinguishing between two cultures of justice—one secular, procedural, and slow; the other almost religious in its demand for swift retribution.

What I've Learned from Waiting

I'm 39 years old. I've spent more of my life waiting than most people ever will. Waiting for surgeries. Waiting for recovery. Waiting for systems to recognise that a young man in a wheelchair could earn degrees in astronomy and physics, could study in Bologna and Milan, could sit in a classroom at Sabancı University in Istanbul and hold his own.

Waiting doesn't mean accepting injustice. It means understanding that some processes can't be rushed without breaking them.

The investigation into Crans-Montana will continue. Evidence will be examined. Responsibilities will be assigned—or not—based on what can be proven, not what we feel must be true. This is how it should work. Not because the system is perfect (it isn't), but because the alternative is worse.

Imagine a world where public outrage determines guilt. Imagine trials conducted by hashtag. Imagine punishment calibrated to the volume of screaming rather than the weight of evidence.

That's not justice. That's a mob.

The Fire Next Time

I don't have answers that will satisfy anyone who lost someone in that blaze. I wouldn't presume to offer comfort from this distance. What I can offer is a reflection—a reminder that the hardest part of civilisation is maintaining it when we're hurt.

The families of the forty-one deserve truth. They deserve a thorough, painstaking investigation that leaves no question unanswered. They deserve to know exactly what went wrong and who, if anyone, bears legal responsibility.

What they cannot have—what none of us can have—is a guarantee that the legal system will heal their wounds.

Pain and law speak different languages. One cries out for the impossible return of the dead. The other quietly weighs evidence, follows procedures, and reaches conclusions that will never bring anyone back. Neither language is wrong. But they can't be translated into each other.

I think about this often, actually.

I think about all the times I wanted the universe to be fair, to compensate me for what I'd lost, to restore what couldn't be restored. I think about the surgeries that helped and the ones that didn't. I think about the deep brain stimulator that was supposed to change everything—and the moment, years later, when it had to come out.

Life doesn't balance its books the way we want. Neither does the courtroom.

Looking Forward

The Crans-Montana case will unfold over months, possibly years. There will be more headlines, more outrage, more political posturing. Through it all, I hope we can remember that defending the rule of law isn't the same as defending the accused. It's defending the system that protects all of us—including, someday, you and me when we stand accused of something, rightly or wrongly.

Defending the rights of people we find repugnant is the hardest test of principle.

It's also the only test that matters.

I'll end with something I believe in my bones: never give up on justice, but never confuse it with vengeance. They look similar from a distance. Up close, they're entirely different things.

To the families in mourning—I see you. I can't imagine your pain, but I honour it. To those watching the legal process with frustration—I understand. But let the scales do their work.

Sometimes the hardest thing we do is wait.

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Gerd Dani is the President of FreeAstroScience, a science and cultural group dedicated to making knowledge accessible to everyone. He holds degrees in Astronomy (University of Bologna) and Physics (University of Milan), and writes from Tirana, Albania. For more reflections on science, society, and the human condition, follow FreeAstroScience.