A couple indicted in early February, and remanded in custody following the death of their 4-month-old baby who presented with significant injuries, was released on Friday for "procedural reasons", we learned. with the Bastia prosecutor.
After the death of their baby at the Nice hospital following his transfer from Corsica, the father was indicted in early February for "aggravated intentional homicide" and "aggravated violence" while the mother had been for "violence aggravated, non-denunciation of ill-treatment of a 15-year-old minor and non-assistance to a person in aggravated danger ”.
Both had been placed in detention by the judge of freedoms and detention after the opening of a judicial investigation entrusted to an investigating judge.
"The release decision is linked to procedural reasons," said Arnaud Viornery, public prosecutor of Bastia, specifying that "on the merits, this decision has no impact on the progress of the information judicial ”.
A decision taken out of time
According to a source familiar with the matter, the placement in detention was the subject of an appeal before the investigating chamber of the court of appeal which confirmed the detention but in a decision taken out of time, leading the general prosecutor's office. to order the release of the parents.
"The release of my client is directly related to our appeal to the Court of Cassation against the decision of the investigating chamber", for his part, said the father's lawyer, Me Grégoire Etrillard.
"We continue to fight to establish the innocence of our client and the errors of the recommendations of the High Authority of Health on the shaken baby syndrome which is the basis of this unfair procedure", added the lawyer, pointing to an "absence of solid scientific basis for the accusation of abuse ”.
The mother "lives a dramatic mourning", according to her lawyer
Me Anna-Livia Guerrini, who defends the mother, said that she was "relieved of the release" of her client because "she is a very young woman of 20 who has endured difficult things and is in dramatic mourning" .
"I had appealed against the pre-trial detention because I felt that there was no medical certainty and that there were guarantees of sufficient representation", she added, satisfied that the instruction “Can be completed in conditions of serenity”.
Help was called at the end of January to take care of this baby in Calenzana, a village in Balagne (Haute-Corse) where he lived with his parents.
First transferred to the Calvi hospital in serious condition, he was then taken to Nice where he died.
In view of the wounds, bruises and intracranial wounds presented by the small victim, attesting to "the violence of the blows", the prosecution had retained the count "of aggravated intentional homicide", then indicated the prosecutor of Bastia.
