The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has issued a strongly worded assertion in opposition to Spain’s resolution to condemn the previous captain of the Prestige oil tanker to jail over the 2002 oil spill. 

As gCaptain reported earlier this week, Spain’s Supreme Court on Tuesday sentenced former captain Apostolos Mangouras to 2 years in jail over the catastrophe, overturning a earlier ruling clearing him of felony duty. Tuesday’s ruling discovered Mangouras responsible of recklessness leading to catastrophic environmental injury and opens the door for injury claims in opposition to each the captain and the insurer.

The Greek tanker sank off Spain’s northwestern coast in 2002, inflicting the discharge of some 63,000 tons of oil into the ocean and fouling 1000’s of miles of shoreline in Spain, France and Portugal.

“This decision represents the dying gasps of a 14 year old attempt to deflect blame onto the shoulders of an octogenarian man, who has been cleared in the court of world opinion and by his peers,” commented ITF seafarers’ part chair Dave Heindel. “Thankfully it is likely to be as unenforceable as it is illogical. This innocent man cannot again be made to sit needlessly in jail.”

Heindel concluded: “The Mangouras case was one of the worst examples of the kneejerk criminalisation of seafarers. The ITF, like many other organisations and individuals, was able to support him during that ordeal. This latest piece of victimisation reminds us that we must all remain vigilant to protect seafarers from these injustices.”

Over the years, the primary level of rivalry within the ongoing case has been the poor state of the 26-year-old tanker and the refusal by Spanish authorities to permit the ship to dock after it was broken in a storm – the ship broke up and sank inside days of the refusal. 

In 2012, classification society ABS, which licensed the seaworthiness of the vessel, was cleared of any legal responsibility in connections to the catastrophe. The swimsuit was thought of by many a “precedent-setting” case that might decide whether or not classification societies might be held accountable by third events in an incident equivalent to this.