Paris: A Paris court has dropped a long-running investigation into whether the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused health problems in France.
The lawyer for the complainants, Bernard Fau, said the Paris appeals court ruled on Wednesday to close the case.
The then-chief of France's radiation safety agency, Pierre Pellerin, had faced preliminary charges in the case for "aggravated deception”.
Researchers and cancer victims accuse the government of intentionally downplaying the risks of the radioactive cloud that the accident in then-Soviet Ukraine spewed over much of Europe, in part to protect France's powerful nuclear industry.
But the prosecutor said earlier this year that the probe had turned up no hard proof that Pellerin misled the public on purpose.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, September 07, 2011, 14:04