BHOPAL, INDIA, JAN. 6, REUTER — India will seek extradition from the United States of the former chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation over the Bhopal gas disaster, a government prosecutor said on Friday.
U.S. Prasad told a Bhopal court arrest warrants issued in November for former chairman Warren Anderson and two officials of a Union Carbide subsidiary had not been served because of American and Hong Kong legal regulations.
The U.S. Department of Justice said an arrest warrant which specified automatic $1,000 dollar bail for Anderson was not covered by U.S. laws on international judicial assistance.
A warrant could not be served on Union Carbide Assistant Secretary John MacDonald for the same reason, Prasad said.
We told the court Hong Kong had not served a similar warrant on Peter Wintle, a senior official of Union Carbide Eastern, for the same reason.
All three have been charged in a criminal suit over the 1984 disaster, in which more than 3,300 people died when a Union Carbide pesticide plant spewed poisonous gas over the central Indian town Bhopal.
The U.S. and Hong Kong governments told their extradition proceedings would have to be opened against the three men if they were to be brought to trial in Bhopal, Prasad said. He said the New Delhi government was preparing an extradition case, but gaye no hint of when it might be brought.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 13, 1989
