Arab News Japan

TOKYO: About a hundred people gathered in front of Tokyo’s Supreme Court building on Monday to demand the dismissal of the judge in the criminal case of three former directors of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) for responsibility in the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

None of the three TEPCO executives prosecuted for involuntary homicide were convicted in the criminal case.

The lawyers and plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court for the dismissal of Judge KUSANO Koichi who has close interests with the TEPCO company. He was appointed to handle the case, but in 2021 was appointed director in charge of external affairs by TEPCO.

Several plaintiffs and lawyers who took turns at the microphone were shocked that the prosecutor could be judge and a significant party to the case at the same time.

The court case revolves around 44 deaths from the evacuation of Futaba Hospital at the time of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Lawyers say that if the three prosecutors in the case did not have common interests with the TEPCO company, the criminal judgment of the three TEPCO officials and other legal cases involving the liability of TEPCO could have been rendered in their favor.

Lawyer KAIDO Yuichi clarified that it was Judge Kusano who acquitted the three former TEPCO executives in June 2022.

The lawyers and representatives of the plaintiffs at the end of the rally in front of the Supreme Court presented 4,539 signatures to request the dismissal of Kusano and asked for the trial to be reopened.

In the only criminal trial concerning the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster against TEPCO executives for professional negligence leading to death, 14,716 plaintiffs had planned a class action suit.