Indictment issued for Metropol case defendants; Municipality among main culprits

At the same time as the indictment was issued for 20 defendants in the Metropole Tower collapse case in Abadan, a prosecutor's office declared the Arvand district municipality to be among the main culprits in this deadly incident.

According to Gholam Abbas Turki, Deputy Public Rights Prosecutor General of Iran, the Abadan Municipality “had a four and a half percent participation in the Metropole project with the Khossin Abdolbaqi Group… it was supposed to receive a share of this building.”

The judicial official added that the result of this participation was the municipality's disregard for "its supervisory duty."

A member of the team dispatched by the Iranian Attorney General added bluntly: "If you ask who is to blame for this issue, part of it goes back to the non-transparent and flawed structure in terms of urban management in the Arvand region."

According to Gholam Abbas Turki, the Arvand Municipality and the technical supervisors have "numerous faults and faults" and "structural defects" in the Metropole collapse case, but another issue is that "when there is a conflict between the municipal administration, that is, between the municipality and the Arvand administration, who is the final decision-maker?"

He considered the lack of clarity of the "decision-making authority" and the "conflict of interest" in the Metropole Tower case to be significant, and said that although "the municipality is largely to blame... other agencies also have a duty to supervise, they did not fulfill their duty."

Despite months of warnings about the building's lack of strength due to violations during its construction, the Abadan Metropole Tower suddenly collapsed on June 2nd, killing 41 people, 16 of whom were workers in the building.

This nine-story commercial, medical, and administrative building, with an area of ​​more than six thousand square meters, was built by Abdul Baqi Holding in 2019 and inaugurated and put into operation by the then governor of Khuzestan.

While judicial authorities had previously announced the arrest of 23 people in this connection, the Judiciary Media Center announced that indictments have been issued for 20 people in this case and that all of these people are in custody.

According to the report, 21 people have been found guilty in this case, one of whom was Hussein Abdulbaqi, the owner of the Metropole Tower, who, according to official reports, was "killed" during the collapse of the tower.

In part of the indictment, due to the "killing" of the building owner and in accordance with Note 1 of Article 85 of the Criminal Procedure Code, "a request has been made from the court to pay blood money in proportion to the fault."

Previously, Karim Hosseini, deputy chairman of the parliament's social affairs commission, had called the collapse of the Metropole structure "a symbol of a lack of proper management, but rather a management system with rent and violations," which "revealed itself in this incident."

Source: Radio Farda