"The vast majority of the facts denounced were already prescribed" as
soon as the complaints were filed in 2006 for poisoning with chlordecone in Guadeloupe and Martinique, assured the Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz on Tuesday, seeming to anticipate a dismissal order in this sensitive file .
Read also: In the West Indies, the chlordecone scandal is growing
Chlordecone, a pesticide banned in France in 1990 but which continued to be authorized in the banana fields of Martinique and Guadeloupe by ministerial exemption until 1993, caused significant and lasting pollution of the two islands.
"Work so that we can understand even if everything cannot be sanctioned, this is the choice made by the judicial authority"
, explains Rémy Heitz in the columns of the daily
France Antilles
, while a great news mobilization is scheduled for April 10 in Martinique to denounce a possible non-place.
"Taking into account the limitation periods then in force, namely 10 years for crimes and 3 years for misdemeanors, the vast majority of the facts denounced were already time-barred"
, in 2006 when several associations from Martinique and Guadeloupe had filed three complaints for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances.
Despite everything, the investigating judges took charge of the case, which has now been investigated for 14 years by the public health department of the Paris judicial court.
Justice "cannot provide all the solutions"
The prosecutor underlines that
"the criminal way in matters of public health, as in the case of chlordecone, can sometimes disappoint the expectations of our fellow citizens towards the intervention of justice"
, whereas the lawyers of one of the civil parties have announced a new procedure to try to circumvent the statute of limitations.
"The judicial authority cannot provide solutions to all the human, social, health or ecological consequences of the facts denounced"
, he adds.
Between 5 and 15,000 Martinicans have already marched in the streets of Fort-de-France on March 27 to denounce the possible prescription of this complaint.
Meetings which show, according to Rémy Heitz
"to what extent the problem of the use of chlordecone is not limited to a criminal procedure and to what extent the expectations are high to understand what happened"
.
More than 90% of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by chlordecone, according to Public Health France, and the West Indian populations have one of the highest incidence rate of prostate cancer in the world.
