Nov
13
(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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