For the SNCF, criminal heiress of the SNCF infra responsible for the maintenance of the tracks at the time of the facts, the required sentence amounts to a fine of 450,000 euros, due to the legal recidivism that the prosecutor asked the Tribunal to remember.
Le Monde with AFP
The Evry prosecution asked, on Wednesday, June 15, the court to condemn the SNCF to “maximum penalty” for manslaughter and involuntary injuries during the rail disaster in Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne), which has made seven dead and hundreds of injured in 2013.
He, on the other hand, asked for the release for SNCF Réseau (ex-Réseau Ferré de France, channel manager) and the former executive railway worker Laurent Waton, who had carried out the last surveillance tour before the drama, believing that the faults concerning them were not characterized.
“Original fault of disorganization”
For the SNCF, criminal heiress of the SNCF infra responsible for the maintenance of the tracks at the time of the facts, the required penalty amounts to a fine of 450,000 euros, due to the legal recidivism that the prosecutor Rodolphe JUY- Burmann asked the court to remember. The SNCF “created the context at the origin of the accident” by a “failure in the maintenance chain”, said the prosecutor, before addressing the many victims or close to victims.
“A fine, whatever the amount, has no meaning for you: no trouble will bring anyone back to life,” admitted the prosecutor, who hopes, however, that such a condemnation will bring them “Two satisfaction”. First, “you have been heard and recognized in your victim status,” he said. And, above all, “the conviction will throw the stigma and discredit” on the public enterprise.
During an indictment of almost three hours, the prosecutor denounced a “original fault of disorganization”, which the ten faults held against the SNCF resulted. “This is not a questioning of railway workers,” he insists, but “the slow degradation of their working conditions that have been impacted by the profitability objectives imposed on them”.
Lack of traceability
Several “deficiencies” are listed by the prosecutor. First of all, a “lack of documentary traceability”: in Brétigny-sur-Orge, “the one who makes the observations” on the lane device “is not the one who signs, the one who takes the ratings is Not the one who writes on the sheet… “, illustrates the prosecutor.
This “absence of traceability has not made it possible to maintain a sufficient alert level” on a known track device, however, for its “recurring geometry defects”. This complex apparatus, called “double junction crossing”, should have been changed early. The speed of traffic of trains reduced permanently.
The prosecutor stressed the usual “delay in maintenance”, with postponed operations. “We slip because other emergencies take precedence,” comments Mr. Juy-Burmann. And this “obvious negligence” in the follow -up of a crack of 10 millimeters detected in 2008 on a heart of crossing the lane device: this heart “has never been examined”.
Throughout the trial, the SNCF challenged the criticized faults, imputing the accident to an undetectable defect in the steel of the lane device and not to maintenance defects. “A company in denial”, tackles the prosecutor.