The Paris judicial court recognizes a “health scandal” but pronounces a final dismissal in this case of large-scale pollution caused by the spreading of this insecticide in the bananaraies of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The victims announce their desire to appeal.
by Jean-Michel Hauteville (Fort-de-France (Martinique), correspondence)
some, in the Antilles, feared this outcome. Justice rendered, Monday, January 2, a final dismissal decision in the Chlordecone criminal file, closing seventeen years of procedure. Unsurprisingly, the two investigating judges of the public health center of the Paris court followed the requisitions of the prosecution, rendered on November 24, in this case of contamination of thousands of hectares of agricultural land by this insecticide with strong toxicity, which had been abundantly spread in the banana plantations of Guadeloupe and Martinique between 1972 and 1993.
For two years, associations which had filed a complaint in February 2006 for “poisoning”, “endangering the life of others”, “administration of harmful substance”, and “deception on the risks inherent in the Use of goods “, followed the disappointments which seemed to make this outcome always more inevitable. Indeed, as early as January 2021, the investigating judges informed the complainants of a possible prescription of the file. Then, in March 2022, the two magistrates notified the civil parties of the end of their investigations, without indicted.
None of the four lawyers of the civil parties, contacted by MO12345lemonde, had yet received the non-placement order on January 5, when the judges’ decision was revealed by the France-Presse agency (AFP) . In this document of more than 300 pages, the two judges recognize a “health scandal”, in the form of “an environmental involvement whose human, economic and social consequences affect and will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants” of Martinique and de Guadeloupe.
“Deni de Justice”
The magistrates nevertheless pronounce a dismissal, evoking the difficulty of “reporting the criminal proof of the facts denounced”, and also emphasizing “the state of technical or scientific knowledge” at the time when the facts were committed. So many factors that contribute to the impossibility of “characterizing a criminal offense”.
“It is not a disappointment. We expected it,” admits Christophe Lèguevaques, lawyer for several civil parties including the association Vivre en Guadeloupe. After the announcement of the requisitions of non-Lieu, M e had, on December 22, sent to the court a 239-page thesis in which he presented in particular “new arguments” against prescription. “What is surprising is that in not even ten days, they had time to assimilate all these arguments and answer them,” quips this lawyer at the Paris bar.
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