3 former executives of Japanese company TEPCO indicted for Fukushima nuclear disaster

Three former executives of Japan's largest electric power company were indicted Monday on charges of professional negligence resulting in death and injury in connection with the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Kyodo News reported that those charged under an independent panel's mandate included the then chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), Tsunehisa Katsumata, and two former vice presidents, Sakae Muto and Ichiro Takekuro.

They are accused of being responsible for injuries sustained by 13 people, including security forces personnel, from hydrogen explosions at the six-reactor plant on the Pacific coast and the deaths of 44 patients evacuated from hospital.

The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 damaged four reactors in Fukushima, melting the cores in three of them and forcing more than 150,000 people to leave their homes, a large percentage of whom have not been able to return. TEPCO's public relations office released a statement Monday issuing a renewed apology over the accident, declining to comment on the criminal case.

Kyodo cited unnamed sources familiar with the case as saying that the three charged former executives, who were not placed in custody, would likely plead not guilty.

They also said the trial would probably not start by the end of the year and would likely take a long time.

Residents of Fukushima prefecture had filed a criminal complaint in 2012 against dozens of officials from TEPCO and the government -- including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan -- but prosecutors decided in 2013 not to press charges due to the difficulty of predicting devastation from tsunamis.

In July last year, however, the Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution mandated that the three former executives should be held criminally responsible.

According to the committee, they had "failed to take pre-emptive measures" despite having reportedly received by June 2009 a report warning that a 15.7-meter-high tsunami could hit the plant.