A year ago, all 15 suspects were acquitted of charges of carelessness and causing public hazard, harming the environment and violating rules of waste management by a local court in Veszprém, in western Hungary.

According to the appeals court ruling, the Veszprém court had violated several procedural rules and “the logic which led to the acquittal of all defendants cannot be traced”.

In Hungary’s worst environmental disaster a million cubic metres of toxic red sludge escaped from the reservoir of the Mal company’s alumina plant, flooding the nearby villages of Kolontár and Somlovásárhely, and the town of Devecser in October 2010.

The toxic spill killed ten people, injured over 200, destroyed 358 homes, wiped out all life in two small rivers and polluted over 1,000 hectares of land. The government welcomed the ruling, calling the first-instance decision “outrageous”.

“The people also found the first-instance ruling unacceptable which had said no one was responsible for Hungary’s biggest industrial disaster that killed ten people and injured and rendered homeless several hundred others,” the Government Information Centre said. It said that reconstruction work after the disaster had been completed in short order.

The government built new homes for those who had lost everything and investigated Mal to make sure that “something like this could never happen again”. “Now it is really the justice system’s turn,” it said.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.

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Toxic Red Sludge Flooded Devecser, Hungary On Monday

MTI photo: Krizsán Csaba