Bulgaria Thursday became the first country in Eastern Europe to sentence former Communist officials for failing to protect the population against fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Two former ministers from the regime of disgraced Communist president Todor Zhivkov were sentenced to prison by the Supreme Court.Grigor Stoichkov, former deputy premier and head of the government commission for civil defense, was jailed for three years. Lubomir Shindarov, former first deputy health minister, got two years.
Both can appeal within 14 days, the court said.
Both Stoichkov and Shindarov denied their guilt and claimed there were no negative health effects from the Chernobyl disaster for the Bulgarian population.
However they accused the Bulgarian Communist party and the Soviet Embassy in Sofia of withholding information on the accident from the public.
"The Soviet ambassador told us we were making more noise than was necessary about Chernobyl," Stoichkov said.
Shindarov said he was unable to inform the population about the nuclear accident because the Communist Party rather than the government controlled radio and television.