It took 25 years, but... last week an Indian court issued an arrest warrant for Warren Anderson, former CEO of Union Carbide.
Union Carbide was the majority owner of Union Carbide India, Ltd., whose pesticide plant in Bhopal released tons of a toxic gas, methyl isocyanate, into its densely populated neighborhood in December 1984. Estimates are that the gas release killed up to 10,000 people in the first three days and caused permanent health problems for up to 200,000 of the half a million people who were exposed.
Interesting to compare the AP’s account with the U.K. Guardian’s: the AP gives Carbide’s spokesman the opening paragraph to defend the company, and lets him repeat unchallenged the claim the company has always made about worker sabotage causing the gas release. Back in 1985, this blogger (D&S co-editor Amy Gluckman) helped out with a legal and organizing effort to pursue charges against Union Carbide in U.S. courts, and I have kept up with the story to some degree since then. As far as I know, everyone who has looked into it views the worker sabotage claim as pure b.s.
Read the AP story here, and the Guardian story here.