Italian General Military Prosecutor

at the Supreme Court

Dr. Maurizio Block was born in Naples, on September 9, 1957.
After finishing high school in 1976, he received a diploma in classical studies.
He enrolled at the University of Naples to study law and graduated with honours in July 1980.
In March 1981, after successfully passing the State competition, he attended the Guardia di Finanza Academy as Naval School officer in Gaeta to fulfil his military service requirements.
He passed the State selection to join the Military Judiciary, where he started working in November 1982.
After being assigned to the Military Court in Padua and completing the trial period, he took his seat in Court. For certain periods, he served as an investigating judge and a pre-trial hearing judge, until July 1996.
During this period, he drafted judgments for delicate cases, both due to the complexity of the legal matters and the high positions of the defendants involved in the investigations.
He has written many constitutional ordinances, which, upon being adopted by the Supreme Court of Cassation, resulted in the abolition of many rules of the ancient military criminal code.
In November 1995, he gained the right to hear cases in the Court of Appeal and in 1996 he was appointed Chief Military Prosecutor at the Military Court in Padua.
He dealt with significant investigations, concerning crimes in the barracks.
He conducted investigations into the Cavalese ski lift incident to determine the responsibility of the Italian military commander of Aviano base, the ejection of bombs in the Adriatic Sea during the conflict in the Balkans, the alleged cases of diseases caused by depleted uranium among Italian soldiers, and serious defects in the military aircraft AMX, which led to aircraft losses and pilots deaths.
Regarding crimes committed during World War II, he investigated the 1945 Pedescala massacre, in which about 80 people died, and managed to track down one of the alleged perpetrators living in Argentina.
He also participated in a significant investigation concerning the indictment of one of the alleged perpetrators of a massacre of civilians in Gorizia at the end of the World War II.
He was consulted by the Parliamentary Commission regarding the Cavalese ski lift incident and by the Defence Commission of the Chamber of Deputies in relation to violence and the quality of life in the barracks. His advice helped address the problem of bullying in the barracks.
Since 1992, he has been a Vice President in the Fiscal Court of Appeal, first in Venice and currently in Rome.
He has taught criminal law at the Non Commissioned Officer School of Carabinieri in Vicenza from 1985 to 1999.
To provide military police personnel with further education, he has spoken at High Studies Defence Center in Rome, Regional Command of Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza in Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Rome, at the Navy Command for Commissary officers and at other Military Commands in Italy.
He has written many articles published in legal journals.
He speaks English and French fluently.
In November 2002, he was appointed a member of an UE Commission for the Grotius 2 project, aimed at drafting a common framework for military peacekeeping operations.
He attended two EU courses on “Training on civilian aspects of crises management”:
1) the core course at Scuola Superiore di Sant’Anna in Pisa in February 2004,
2) the specialization course on “The Rule of Law” at the Bernadotte Academy in Sando (Sweden) in April 2004.
In April 2005, he was appointed national expert in the European Mission EUJUST LEX Integrated Rule of Law mission for Iraq in Brussels, a role he held until June 2006, with the task of following up on issues related to Iraqi judiciary.
He was elected to the Council of Military Judiciary serving from 2009 to 2013.
He was appointed President of Military Court in August 2016, overseeing all the military crimes committed by military personnel throughout the State.
In December 2017, he was appointed Military General Prosecutor at the Military Court of Cassation, the highest position in the Military Judiciary, where he still serves.
Currently he is member of the Council of military Judiciary for his apical position in the military Judiciary.
He is currently:
– Vice-President of the International Society for military Law and the Law of war, as well as President of its Italian group;
– Editor of the legal journal “Rassegna della Giustizia militare”.
– a member of the Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis and a member of the Department of analysis, study monitoring of criminal and mafia phenomena, Vatican City.
He organizes and participates in international conferences and seminars and gives lectures on legal, criminal, and fiscal matters at highly qualified universities, institutions and academies.
He has held conferences at the Public Health School in Padua on the theme “the culture of legality” aimed at directors of complex operating units and general managers of health companies.
He is currently President of the Fiscal Court in second instance at L’Aquila.