A judicial investigation was opened following the fire, probably of criminal origin, of a building partly squatted in Marseille which claimed the lives of three Nigerians, the prosecution announced on Tuesday (August 3rd).
To read also: Marseille: three dead and wounded in the fire of a building, the criminal track retained
A woman and her four-year-old child were also seriously injured in the fire. Shortly after 5 am on July 17, a fire broke out in the block of a building, largely squatted by Nigerian migrants, located in the HLM “
Les Flamants
” city in the north of Marseille. Three men of 24, 26 and 33 years of Nigerian nationality had died and a 46-year-old woman and her four-year-old child hospitalized in an absolute emergency, with serious burns.
The judicial investigation was opened Friday by the Marseille prosecutor's office on charges of "
damage by fire resulting in death
" and "
damage by fire resulting in mutilation or permanent disability
", concerning the two seriously injured.
But also for "
damage by fire resulting in total incapacity for work for more than eight days
" concerning four other injured men aged 24, 26, 28 and 33 years and finally "
damage by fire resulting in total incapacity for work not exceeding eight days
”about a 22-year-old man.
The privileged criminal track
“
We have at least the existence of two fires, one on the sixth floor, the other in the stairwell.
What makes us leave on a criminal track
, had declared the day of the fire Dominique Laurens, prosecutor of Marseilles during a press point.
On the spot the situation was very tense between the Nigerian community and the drug traffickers who held a point of deal in the stairwell, had specified the prosecutor.
Sheets had been tied on the facade of this ten-story building testifying to the panic at the time of the tragedy.
Read also: Third homicide in a weekend in the northern districts of Marseille
"
The situation was very worrying
" on this building which was to be destroyed and legal means had been engaged to dislodge the squatters, then indicated the president of social landlord 13 Habitat, Lionel Royer-Perreault. On July 23, the mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan wrote to Prime Minister Jean Castex, asking for the Estates General in the face of the extent of poor housing in France's second city. Some 41,000 applications for social housing are pending, 15,000 people have at one time or another been homeless and 1,500 people live in squats or slums.
