Police in Hungary have detained a senior official of the company that owns the metals plant responsible for a reservoir which recently burst, flooding several towns with red toxic waste in an environmental disaster that left seven people dead.
Zoltan Bakonyi, head of aluminium producer MAL Zrt, has been detained for 72 hours, Anna Nagy, government spokeswoman, said on Monday.
At least seven people died and 150 others were injured in what officials quickly termed Hungary's worst-ever chemical accident which polluted an area of 40sq km as well as tributaries of the Danube river.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, said the company should be brought under state control because of its role in the disaster that has spoiled large areas the country's west and polluted rivers.
"We need to hold the company responsible for the red sludge spill under state control and its assets under state closure until all of these four tasks are handled," Orban told parliament on Monday.
He said a state commissioner would be appointed to take over control over MAL Zrt and manage its assets.
'War of Words'
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from Ajka, 160km west of the capital, Budapest, said the arrest "comes as no surprise".
"The war of words between the government and the company had been intensifying over the last couple of days," she said.
MAl Zrt has apologised for the disaster and said it will pay compensation "in proportion to its responsibility".
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Our correspondent said: "The government freely admits that it could have been tougher on private business and it has not been.
"The breach of safety regulations, the lack of enforcement, the way these [company] people have been able to make money clearly at the expense of public-safety interests ... all of these things have to be pinned at the door of the Hungarian government."
According to the latest estimates, some 600,000 cubic metres of toxic sludge spilled from the reservoir at the alumina plant in Ajka last Monday.
The reservoir still holds 2.5 million tonnes of the waste.
Engineers now expect to finish new barriers to contain the sludge by Tuesday, as hundreds of volunteers, disaster relief teams and engineers race against time to erect a new dam.
"We still don't know for now whether the company overloaded the reservoirs or not. But if that is the case, it's illegal storage of waste and that constitutes a crime," Zoltan Illes, environment state secretary, said.
The environmental disaster occurred when the walls of the reservoir burst a week ago, sending a tidal wave of sludge through surrounding villages.
Coppied by http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/10/20101011104817179833.html
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