Indictment Issued for Metropol Tower Case Defendants; Municipality Identified as Primary Culprit
Coinciding with the issuance of an indictment for 20 defendants in the Metropol Tower collapse case in Abadan, a prosecutor’s office official identified the Aruband district municipality as a primary culprit in this fatal incident.
According to Gholamabbas Torki, Deputy General Prosecutor for Public Affairs of Iran, the Abadan municipality had a “4.5 percent partnership” with Khosein Abdolbaqi’s group in the Metropol project “and was supposed to benefit from this building.”
This judicial official added that the result of this partnership was the municipality’s disregard for its “supervisory duties.”
The member of the team dispatched by Iran’s General Prosecutor explicitly stated: “If you ask who is responsible in this matter, part of it goes back to the non-transparent and structurally flawed management of the Aruband district municipality.”
According to Gholamabbas Torki, the Aruband municipality and technical supervisors in the Metropol collapse case have “multiple negligences and faults” and “structural defects,” but another issue is raised based on the question: “When there is conflict and contradiction between urban management, that is between the municipality and Aruband management, who is the final decision-maker?”
He considered the lack of clarity regarding the “decision-making authority” and “conflict of interest” important in the Metropol tower case and said that although “the municipality bears the largest share of error… other organizations also have supervisory responsibilities that they failed to fulfill.”
Despite months of continuous warnings about the building’s structural instability due to construction violations, the Abadan Metropol Tower suddenly collapsed on June 22, killing 41 people, including 16 workers present in the building.
This 9-story commercial, medical, and administrative building spanning more than 6,000 square meters was constructed by Abdolbaqi Holding in 2019 and was inaugurated and put into operation by the then-governor of Khuzestan Province.
While judicial authorities had previously announced the arrest of 23 people in connection with the case, the Judiciary’s Media Center announced that indictments have been issued for 20 people in this case, and all of these individuals remain in custody.
According to this report, 21 people have been identified as responsible in this case, one of whom was Hossein Abdolbaqi, the owner of the Metropol Tower, who, according to official reports, was killed during the tower’s collapse.
In a section of the issued indictment, considering the “death” of the building’s owner and in accordance with Note 1 of Article 85 of the Criminal Procedure Code, “a request for payment of compensation proportional to the degree of negligence from the court” has been made.
Previously, Karim Hosseini, Vice-Chairman of the Social Commission of Parliament, had described the Metropol structure collapse as “a symbol of mismanagement and a management system riddled with corruption and violations” that “revealed itself in this incident.”
Source: Radio Farda
