After a three-hour summary to detail the charges against the SNCF, the prosecutor requested this Wednesday the maximum penalty of 450,000 euros against the SNCF, at the criminal court of Évry-Courcouronnes (Essonne).
The public company has been on trial for nearly eight weeks for homicides and involuntary injuries after the derailment, on July 12, 2013, of the Intercités Limoges-Paris at Brétigny station, an accident which claimed the lives of seven people and caused more than a hundred wounded.
The prosecutor castigated the “lies” and the “smells of bad faith” which “hovered over this case, and which left a bitter taste”.
“The SNCF made the deliberate choice to favor performance over the safety of its passengers”, estimated the magistrate, who applied himself to dismantling the thesis defended by the SNCF of an unforeseeable accident.
Read also“Nothing is coherent”: the monitoring of a crack at the origin of the derailment agitates the trial of Brétigny
For the public prosecutor, the tilting of the joint that caused the derailment of the train is due to maintenance defects, negligence, a lack of traceability of maintenance operations, in a context where economic imperatives took precedence.
“We came across a company here that lives in denial,” asserted the prosecutor.
“Whatever the sentence, it will seem very derisory to you, launched the magistrate to the civil parties.
No pain will bring anyone back to life.
But I hope you will have the satisfaction of having been heard and recognized in your victim statue.
And this condemnation will cast opprobrium on the SNCF a few days before departures on vacation.
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In addition to SNCF, SNCF Réseau and an SNCF executive are appearing in this trial, which is due to end this week.
