October 26, 2002	Saturday	Sha’aban 19,1423

PARIS, Oct 25: Sixteen years after the explosion at Chernobyl of a nuclear power plant, 26 more French citizens have decided to file suit — technically for “poisoning” — against the French government, charging it with not properly informing them of the risks linked to the explosion.

With the additional lawsuits — filed on Tuesday at the Palais de Justice in Paris — 416 French nationals have so far chosen to sue the French government not only for having misinformed them as to the dangers associated with the explosion, but also for having, during many years, pretended that a cloud containing an important amount of nuclear fallout from the explosion had never crossed over into France.

But, with the appearance of telltale signs — usually a larger than usual presence of thyroid cancer in the populations located close to the French border — increasingly vociferous calls were made for national authorities to open up their files as to what were the true repercussions in France of the accident.