The Cayenne prosecution requested Thursday the opening of a judicial investigation against X for "involuntary killings and involuntary injuries" after the death of three soldiers in Guyana, in July 2019, during a Harpie operation to combat activity illegal gold. Five other soldiers were also non-fatally injured.
On July 17, 2019, Master Sergeant Edgar Roellinger, Master Corporal 1st Class Cédric Guyot, and Master Corporal Mickaël Vandeville, of the 19th Régiment du Génie de Besançon, were killed after entering a gallery in the part of an operation to destroy wells and / or galleries at an illegal primary gold extraction site, in the Saint-Jean sector on Petit Abounami, in south-western Guyana.
The investigation, now entrusted to an examining magistrate, will, according to the public prosecutor Samuel Finielz, check whether the operation resulted in the death of the three soldiers and the intoxication of the other five "out of clumsiness, recklessness, inattention , negligence or failure to observe an obligation of prudence or security imposed by law or regulation ”.
A survey on compliance with protocols
The day of the tragedy, the three deceased soldiers had entered around 4 p.m. in the gallery n ° 6 of the site, the second had found the first unconscious, the third had come to the rescue. Earlier in the day, "another gallery, identified as gallery n ° 5", had "been the subject of two destructions [...] at 11:30 am and then at 3:15 pm".
The investigators' preferred hypothesis is carbon monoxide poisoning emanating from a gallery communicating with the fatal gallery and which had been the object of two operations of destruction with explosives, the same day.
“The findings” of “investigators and firefighters […] using smoke bombs have established that gallery No. 5 communicates with gallery No. 6. The gases generated by this double explosion could therefore have been present in gallery No. 6 ", at the time of the intervention of the three soldiers, the prosecutor continued.
"The analysis carried out by the general direction of the armament of the various types of gases generated by the combustion of the explosives highlights the presence of carbon monoxide", he added. And "expertise converges towards poisoning the military with carbon monoxide".
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"The investigations of the investigating judge will aim to determine whether the conditions for implementing military security protocols applicable to this type of operation [...] have been respected or not," said the prosecutor.