MADRID, Jan 26 (Reuters) – Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced the captain of the Prestige oil tanker, which sank off Spain’s northwestern coast in 2002, masking hundreds of kilometres of shoreline in gas oil, to 2 years in jail on Tuesday.

The captain, Apostolos Mangouras, was convicted of recklessness leading to catastrophic environmental injury, in line with an announcement by the courtroom, overturning a earlier sentence which cleared him of felony duty.

The sinking of the Greek tanker, which was crusing to Gibraltar, launched an estimated 63,000 tones of foul-smelling black gas alongside the Galicia coast and compelled the closure of the nation’s richest fishing grounds.

The new ruling opens the door to wreck claims in opposition to the captain and the insurer, The London Steamship Owners Mutual Insurance Association, with one prosecutor calling for greater than 4 billion euros.

The Galician regional courtroom had beforehand concluded it was not possible to ascertain felony duty and that the catastrophe was partly because of the 26-year-old tanker’s poor state of restore.

After a storm broken certainly one of its gas tanks, the ship had spent days drifting at sea having been refused permission to dock by Spanish, Portuguese and French authorities. It ultimately break up into two and sank about 250 miles off the coast, spurting oil into the water from the ocean mattress.

In Tuesday’s ruling, Mangouras was accused of guiding the tanker in treacherous situations with full information of its weakened construction whereas the ship was overloaded by not less than 2,000 tonnes of gas oil. (Reporting by Paul Day, Editing by Julien Toyer and Angus MacSwan)

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