Renato Balduzzi called the judgement "without exaggeration, truly historic" but said that the worldwide battle against asbestos is not over.
The prosecutors had said that thousands of people had died following contact with asbestos fibres coming from four of the company's plants. Eternit had stopped the operations there in the 1980s, some years before Italy banned asbestos, and the company has since changed hands.
Stephan Schidheiny of Switzerland and Jean-Louis de Cartier of Belgium, who were key shareholders of Eternit, were each given 16-year terms for failing to stop fibres arising from the operations from spreading over the region.
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