Gathered in a collective called C 19, more than 600 doctors filed a complaint Thursday, March 19 against the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe whom they accuse of " state lie " in their management of the coronavirus epidemic crisis. The three founding doctors of this collective - Philippe Naccache, Emmanuel Sarrazin and Ludovic Toro - have to do this before the Court of Justice of the Republic, the only court empowered to judge acts committed by members of the government in the exercise of their functions .
Read also: LIVE - Coronavirus: the disease is spreading, France is having its first weekend of containment
Concretely, these practitioners accuse Agnès Buzyn and Édouard Philippe of not having taken the necessary measures to slow down the arrival of the epidemic in France, even though they were aware of the danger.
Referral to the administrative court
The scandal of the shortage of protective masks was the first trigger. “The masks are coming, the government told them at the end of February, and they believed it, tells the Parisian Fabrice Di Vizio, lawyer for the group. At the beginning of March, when they understood that they would not have the masks, we started telling them that they did not need them… It is in reality an admission of helplessness and a lie, because the truth is, we had no stocks! ”. The collective then brought justice for the first time.
The administrative court is seized in summary procedure on March 4. Before the hearing takes place, the government this time promises the effective supply of the masks. But these only come in drops. "The caregivers' anger was all the greater since they discovered that a French company produces masks ... but on behalf of the British Ministry of Health, which ordered before France!" , again accuses the lawyer of the collective of practitioners.
Complaint to the Court of Justice of the Republic
The detonator of the criminal complaint filed on March 19 before the Court of Justice of the Republic is the interview with Agnès Buzyn in the newspaper Le Monde , published on March 17. "In essence, she explains that she knew everything and did nothing , " laments Fabrice Di Vizio.
Read also: Coronavirus: Macron responds to Buzyn and to the "commentators" who "had foreseen" the crisis "once it has occurred"
For the lawyer for the group, "a criminal investigation is now essential to know the extent of the information that has been hidden from the French and determine the responsibilities of each in this health fiasco." The lawyer requests in particular that "the servers of the department be searched".
For the time being, the complaint is being studied by the Complaints Commission, which may choose to classify it, or to transmit it to the investigating committee. The investigating commission, like an examining magistrate, will then have the possibility of launching a criminal investigation.
The complaint relates to article 223-7 of the penal code, according to which “whoever voluntarily refrains from taking or provoking measures making it possible, without risk for him or for the thirds, to fight a disaster likely to create a danger for personal safety is punished by two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros ”.
Automatic screening
For this collective of doctors, it should have acted more quickly, from January 30, when the World Health Organization (WHO) qualified the emergency epidemic of international public health. Concretely, the government should "build up protective stocks (masks, gowns, glasses, gloves ...)" but also "buy tests in large quantities" and "follow the recommendations of the same WHO", namely "proceed to screening systematic". A technique, according to these doctors, which would have made it possible to identify and isolate asymptomatic people when there is one patient for five healthy carriers. "It was done successfully in South Korea and should have been a model for Europe," said the lawyer for the group.
