A Jordanian court sentenced, on Sunday, five officials to three years imprisonment in the case of a chlorine gas explosion at the port of Aqaba, south of Jordan, which took place last year and resulted in the death of 13 individuals, as stated by a judicial source.
The gas leak from a container that fell from a crane on one of the ships in the port of Aqaba, located 328 kilometers south of Amman, on June 27 of last year led to the death of 13 people, including 8 Jordanians and 5 Vietnamese, and injured more than 260.
The source, who preferred not to disclose his identity, told Agence France-Presse that “The Aqaba Penal Court convicted five individuals on Sunday: the Director of Operations, the Head of the Public Safety Department, the Head of the Loading and Unloading Department, the Head of the Loading and Unloading shift, and one of the port workers, on charges of causing death 13 times and causing harm 110 times, and they were sentenced to the maximum penalty of three years imprisonment.”
He added that the court found that “The procedures followed regarding the chlorine gas shipment were not commensurate with the dangerousness of this substance in terms of public safety measures and close supervision by those in charge of loading and unloading operations.”
According to the source, the court acquitted five other individuals, including the director of the Aqaba company, “due to lack of legal evidence against them.”
The first trial sessions of these ten officials began on July 21 of last year, where charges, including “causing death, causing harm, and damaging others’ property, and violating the management of hazardous materials and waste regulations”, were brought against them, in addition to negligence and lax oversight.
A government committee headed by Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya concluded in its investigations of the incident in early July of last year that there was a “significant deficit” and “negligence” in the public safety procedures in the port, pointing out that “the main cause of the accident is the unsuitability of the crane’s wire rope capacity with the weight of the container load” that fell and caused fatalities and injuries.
