TOKYO (Sputnik) – Japan’s prosecution committee will file a suit against three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) senior executives on Friday for professional negligence leading to death and injury in the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, national media reported.
The committee voted in favor of prosecution last July, siding with residents who filed an appeal to reconsider an earlier Tokyo District Prosecutor’s Office ruling that the scale of the earthquake and tsunami was unforeseeable.
According to the public panel’s decision cited by Japans’ national broadcaster NHK, three of TEPCO’s former senior executives – Tsunehisa Katsumata, 75, chairman at the time of the disaster, and then-vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro, 69, and Sakae Muto, 65 – will face prosecution for professional negligence leading to death and injury.
The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident that killed over 15,000 is considered the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
