Victims of Rapeseed Oil Feel Abandoned : Spaniards Get Nowhere in Court 4 Years After Mystery Epidemic

More than four years after a mystery epidemic blamed on adulterated cooking oil killed more than 360 people and poisoned 20,000 others, the victims are losing patience with the slow pace of Spain’s legal system.

Every week hundreds of people bearing terrible scars gather at Madrid’s law courts to demand the trial of 42 businessmen charged in connection with the affair.

“The real scandal is that Spanish justice has so far failed to prosecute one single individual,” said Arcadio Fernandez, head of the Toxic Oil Syndrome Victims’ Assn.

Fernandez has taken his campaign to the United Nations, the European Parliament and World Health Organization meetings.

In May, 1981, rapeseed oil, adulterated for industrial use, was sold by itinerant vendors as cooking oil.

Experts say the oil, consumed mainly in working class areas of Madrid, is the most likely cause of a unique set of symptoms ranging from lung failure and limb deformation to the destruction of the body’s immune system. Many of the survivors were crippled for life.

The victims raised $45,000, an amount matched by government legal aid, to finance a private prosecution.

However, the slow pace of justice and filibustering defense tactics have so far delayed the trial of the 42 businessmen charged with crimes against public health, fraud and falsification of documents.

A judicial inquiry on the Toxic Oil Syndrome now runs into more than 200,000 pages. It points to the oil as the most likely carrier of the disease, based on the research of Spanish doctors and the World Health Organization.

However, lawyers acting for the businessmen have repeatedly challenged the inquiry’s conclusions, setting back the opening of the trial until at least June. A separate inquiry into the alleged responsibility of public health officials has been reopened twice at the request of lawyers acting for the victims’ association.

“The judiciary has shown no interest in probing government negligence,” prosecution lawyer Jose Mohedano said. “In any other European country, the government of the day would have fallen. In Spain, not even the health minister resigned.”

Angela Menseger, a mother of two, will probably not live to see the businessmen brought to trial.

As she shuffled about in her small apartment in Leganes, a suburb outside Madrid where 2,000 families consumed the toxic oil, she described the nightmare she and her family have lived through.

“I have been in and out of the hospital for four years and doctors can no longer find any veins to give me blood transfusions,” Menseger said. “My husband is now mentally handicapped, the syndrome attacked his brain.”

“Doctors say I have contracted cancer of the liver. They won’t tell me how long I have to live, but I know I am dying.”

Fernandez, who has fought to ensure that victims get proper medical attention, says only two of 24 special clinics set up in 1981 are now functioning properly.

“The government wants to forget about us,” Fernandez said. “I wish the symptoms of the syndrome could disappear as easily.”