The Paris prosecutor's office has requested a dismissal of the investigation into poisoning with chlordecone, this highly toxic pesticide used until 1993 by banana growers in the West Indies, he said on Friday, confirming a source close to the case.
In 2006, several Martinican and Guadeloupean associations had filed a complaint against the French State for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances.
This product was banned in mainland France in 1990, but continued to be used for three more years in West Indian plantations, causing many health problems, including prostate cancer.
With 227 cases out of 100,000 inhabitants, Martinique indeed holds the world record for this type of cancer.
But the dismissal is expected because the facts would be mostly prescribed.
Already in 2021, Rémy Heitz, then Paris prosecutor, had estimated in an interview with the daily France Antilles that "the vast majority of the facts denounced were already prescribed" from the filing of the complaints in 2006.
Last March, the investigating judges of the public health pole of the Paris court, announced the end of the investigations in this case without having proceeded to indictments.
