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(ANSAmed) – MADRID, NOVEMBER 13 – A Spanish court acquitted
Wednesday all three defendants of blame for the largest
environmental disaster in European history.
No civil or penal responsibility was assigned for the damage
to the over 2,000 beaches along 1,700 km of coastline stretching
from Portugal to southern France, which in 2002 were flooded
with 77,000 tonnes of crude oil. Some 17,000 birds died, vast
tracts of mussels were destroyed, and over 4 billion euros in
economic and environmental damages resulted when the Prestige
oil tanker shipwrecked off the coast of Galicia.
The sentence issued Wednesday by the high court of La
Coruna has reignited anger among the public. In the immediate
wake of the disaster, the solidarity network Nunca Mas (‘Never
Again’) was set up, later going on to stand as plaintiff in the
trial.
The network’s spokesperson Zaquin Rubido called it ”truly
disappointing” and the ”worst sentence we could have
expected”. He pledged to lodge an appeal with the
Constitutional Court.
”No one can be certain of what caused the incident”, nor
what ”would have been the most suitable reaction in the
emergency situation created by the Prestige accident”, said the
head of the court, Juan Luis Pia, in reading out the sentence
acquitting of environment crimes the three accused: the tanker’s
captain Apostolos Mangouras, his Greek chief engineer Nikolaos
Argyropoulos and the head of the Spanish merchant navy at the
time, Jose Luis Lopez-Sors.

The Spanish court did however sentence the 78-year-old Greek
captain of the Prestige oil tanker to nine months in prison for
resisting attempts to tow the wreck away from shore for
”serious disobedience”. He received a suspended sentence on
account of his age. The prosecution had requested sentences of
between 4 and 12 years in jail for all of the accused.
Without convictions for criminal responsibility, no one
will be made to pay damages, either: damages totalling over four
billion euros, according to judicial experts. To cover costs
will only be the 22 million euros deposited in 2002 by the
ship’s insurer, The London Stream-Ship Owners Mutual Insurance.
The Bahamas-flagged, Japanese-made supertanker was under
Liberian and a Greek shipping company ownership and had a US
navigation certificate (ABS). It had been leased to a Swiss
company and insured by a British one, and was 26 years old at
the time of the accident, on November 13, 2002.
The tanker was carrying 77,000 tonnes of crude oil during a
heavy storm from St Petersburg to Gibraltar when it listed to
starboard due to a ”structural fault” and began to spew oil
into the sea. The development minister at that time under the
José Maria Aznar government, Francisco Alvarez Cascos, ordered
the merchant navy to take the ship away from the coast to the
high seas. After six days at the mercy of the waves, carried
first north and then towed south, the Prestige cracked into two
at 250 km from the Galician coastline and sunk to 3,600 metres
deep.
”There is no risk that the spill will arrive at the
coast,” the deputy prime minister at that time, Mariano Rajoy,
had said, downplaying the gravity of the situation. The immense
oil slick was shortly thereafter carried by the currents to the
virgin coasts of Galicia. (ANSAmed).

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