[JURIST] A Hungarian court in Gyor ordered a retria on Monday over the 2010 toxic red sludge spill that killed ten people in one of the country’s worst environmental disasters. Judge Csilla Zolyomi [official profile, Hungarian] said that there had been procedural errorsl [Reuters report] in the hearing of witnesses and in the court’s justification for acquittal. Monday’s ruling is not subject to appeal [France 24 report]. The retrial was called after prosecutors appealed a 2016 ruling acquitting 15 people [JURIST report] and holding that executives and top employees of MAL had not been criminally negligent in causing the spill. The toxic spill destroyed hundreds of homes in three towns, seeped into rivers and emitted a pungent acidic smell. Despite vast sums of money spent depolluting the area, hundreds of hectares of land remain sealed off and cannot be used for cultivation.

The spill, which was one of the worst environmental disasters of the nation, with more than 1 million cubic meters [AP report] of the sludge destroying hundreds of homes, took years of clean-up and cost 40 billion forints (USD $140 million). Many neighborhoods had to be demolished and rebuilt. After the spill, Mal Corp, facing blame for the incident, was taken over by the government. Several organizations expressed discontent with the January acquittal, such as Greenpeace [advocacy website], which stated that while no one had been held responsible for the spill, “it is obvious that human negligence led to the catastrophe.”