Anti-rail protest leader electrocuted in Alps

A leader of a protest movement against a new high-speed rail link between Lyon in France and Turin in Italy suffered an electric shock Monday after climbing onto an electricity pylon during a demonstration.

Luca Abba, 37, was gravely injured both by the shock and by the 10-metre (33-foot) fall as he was running away from a police raid on the protest.

Abba spoke live to a radio station by phone moments before his fall.

“I managed to escape dozens of police. They’re trying to come up and get me. I’m climbing up,” an anxious-sounding Abba is heard saying in the call before shouting: “I’m going to hang from the electric wires if you don’t stop!”

Abba was rescued from the Alpine Val di Susa area in a helicopter ambulance and was being treated in a hospital in Turin around 60 kilometres away.

The high-speed rail link — projected to cost 20 billion euros — would allow a connection between Paris and Milan in just over four hours compared to seven at the moment and between Lyon and Turin in less than two hours.

The project is considered a strategic European transport corridor.

Part of the population in the picturesque Val di Susa is against the project, which is expected to be completed in 2023, and it has become a focus point for wider social protests against the Italian government.