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Family members of victims leave the Jean Mermoz assembly hall after the verdict of the AZF disaster trial in Toulouse, southwestern France, November 19, 2009. A French court on Thursday dismissed an attempt to hold oil major Total and its former boss responsible for a 2001 blast at a chemical factory that killed 31 people and injured thousands more. The court in the southern French city of Toulouse, where the disaster took place, also cleared Total's subsidiary Grande Paroisse, the owner of the AZF chemical fertiliser factory where the explosion occurred and the plant's director. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau (FRANCE CRIME LAW DISASTER)
Photograph by: REGIS DUVIGNAU
Credit: REUTERS
The court in Toulouse, in southwest France, acquitted the former chief of the AZF chemical fertilizer plant, Serge Biechlin, and Total subsidiary Grande Paroisse based on the "benefit of doubt."
The court decision came Thursday.
Eight years after the explosion that also left more than 2,000 people injured, no one has been convicted.
The blast tore apart the chemical plant with the force of a 3.4 magnitude earthquake. It happened ten days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, raising fears at the time that the blast had a link with terrorism.
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