Remember the 33 miners who were trapped underground for 69 days in 2010 because of a mining accident?
On Friday they were stunned to learn no charges would be filed against the mining company:
The decision, announced by prosecutors today, prompted a furious reaction from the victims – many of them still traumatised by their ordeal. They were eventually plucked to safety in a metal capsule, one by one, up a narrow 2,300ft shaft at the San José mine in the Atacama desert, 500 miles north of in the capital, Santiago.
“It is impossible that in an accident of this magnitude no one is held responsible,” said Mario Sepulveda, one of the survivors. “Today, I want to dig a deep hole and bury myself again. Only this time, I don’t want anybody to find me.”
In separate comments, he attacked Chile’s “crappy” justice system and told the website Soychile that the former mine owners, Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny, were now “wandering around free and happy … despite the fact that they left us buried”.
Another survivor, Esteban Rojas, told the Chilean paper La Tercera: “Sernageomin [Chile’s National Geology and Mining Service] should be found guilty for not investigating as it should have.”
A March 2011 report from a Chilean congressional commission found
plenty of blame to go around:
A Chilean congressional commission has found owners Alejandro Bohn and Marcelo Kemeny responsible for the catastrophic failure half a mile underground in the San Jose mine deep below the Atacama Desert.
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But Deputy Alejandro Garcia Huidobro said the commission had also determined that Chile's mine safety agency, Sernageomin, was 'administratively responsible' for failing to fully enforce safety rules at the site.