Prosecutors
open criminal probes over ‘man-made’ Fukushima meltdown disaster
2
August, 2012
Prosecutors opened
converging criminal probes Wednesday into the March 2011
triple-meltdown disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No.
1 nuclear plant, looking to hold people in positions of power
accountable, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
The
Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office and two other district
prosecutor's offices acted in response to five criminal complaints,
including accusations that Tepco executives and government officials
committed acts of professional negligence that resulted in deaths,
injuries and exposure to high levels of radiation that could have
been avoided, sources said.
The
other investigative tacks were initiated by the Fukushima District
Public Prosecutor's Office and the Kanazawa District Public
Prosecutor's Office in Ishikawa Prefecture.
The
prosecutors waited until a government investigative panel released
its final report on the crisis on July 23 to avoid influencing the
results. But the prosecutors may face a number of difficulties in
establishing their cases, the sources said.
The
Tokyo prosecutors accepted three criminal complaints, including one
that accuses 26 senior officials of Tepco and the education ministry
of actions that resulted in the deaths of hospital patients near the
plant and the unnecessary exposure of residents to radiation.
The
number of victims was not specified. It is believed some bedridden
hospital patients died from lack of proper treatment in the early
days of the radiation evacuation scare when some were allegedly
abandoned.
Another
complaint accuses six government officials, including Kan, of failing
to act quickly to ensure that radioactive steam was vented from the
containment vessel of the plant's reactor 1, leading to hydrogen
explosions that injured plant workers.
The
Fukushima prosecutors accepted a complaint in which some 1,300
prefectural residents accuse 33 people, including former Tepco
Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and Haruki Madarame, chairman of the
government's Nuclear Safety Commission, of negligence in connection
with the disaster, which another, Diet-appointed independent panel
concluded was effectively "man-made," particularly because
the power plant lacked the quake and tsunami defenses that historical
evidence indicated it required.
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