He deplores a “drama of routine”, criticizes “cosmetic” repairs, as well as a desire by certain officials to “preserve their funds”.
In a severe indictment, the prosecution requested that the tragedy of rue d'Aubagne, the death of eight people in the collapse of two unsanitary buildings, in the heart of Marseille, in 2018, be the subject of a trial.
In his indictment on Thursday, which AFP was able to consult on Saturday, vice-prosecutor Michel Sastre requests the dismissal of the four people indicted before the Marseille criminal court, for involuntary homicide and involuntary injuries.
The magistrate, however, abandoned the charge of endangering others, a proposal which could exclude a good part of the approximately 70 civil parties currently on the file.
“If the requisitions were to be followed (by the three investigating judges responsible for this case), a pre-trial hearing could take place in the spring, for a possible opening of the trial this fall,” explained the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille Nicolas Bessone.
An elected official, an architect and two companies could be judged
Four people could therefore be judged for these eight missing lives, in a tragedy symptomatic of the scale of the issue of unsanitary housing in the second largest city in France, in its very heart, just a stone's throw from the Old Port and of Canebière.
Read also Collapsed buildings: Marseille, between hope and desolation
First two individuals: Julien Ruas, deputy mayor responsible for prevention and risk management, when the city was still led by Jean-Claude Gaudin (LR), and Richard Carta, the architect appointed as expert by the administrative court of Marseille, which had inspected the building at 65, rue d'Aubagne, where the eight victims lived, on October 18, 2018, barely three weeks before the tragedy.
A visit that he had botched in an hour, without questioning any resident.
And two legal entities: Marseille Habitat, a mixed economy company from the city of Marseille which owns 63, rue d'Aubagne, an empty but totally dilapidated building which collapsed at the same time as 65, and the Liautard firm, the co-ownership trustee responsible for the management of 65.
“Inevitable” collapses
If, in his indictment, Michel Sastre concedes that “no one could predict a collapse” of the two buildings, the magistrate considers that “it was established”, during the intervention of Richard Carta, that these collapses were “inevitable”.
“The disintegration process was launched, and nothing could stop it”, and this since 2017, concludes the magistrate.
But Richard Carta “did not fulfill the minimum obligations of diligence of an expert, (…) because it was in the evening that he was in a hurry”.
“Mr. Carta was accustomed to visiting dilapidated buildings, and of the 65, he saw them regularly, perhaps thinking, like everyone who is not an expert, that a building does not collapse,” continues the vice -Marseille prosecutor, referring to “a routine drama”.
As for Julien Ruas, he demonstrated during the investigation that “any notion of proactivity, responsibility and initiative in relation to his missions was completely foreign to him”, scathes the prosecution's indictment.
Thousands of unprocessed reports
And the magistrate reminded in passing the number of forgotten files in the service headed by this elected official, director of a retirement home by profession: 2,600 reports of buildings under suspicion of danger not processed, 230 buildings in serious and imminent danger not followed.
Stigmatizing the "lack of curiosity" of certain experts, while "at least nine legal expertises" were carried out on the two collapsed buildings, between 2005 and 2018, Michel Sastre's indictment is also severe for the two legal entities in question .
Thus, when the Liautard firm undertook work at 65, “minimum cost cosmetics were favored”, notes the magistrate, who “deduced that money was the reason which kept the trustee in this building”.
Likewise, denouncing “a worrying phenomenon of habituation to risk” at Marseille Habitat, the indictment underlines that there was “unquestionably a deliberate refusal” by this mixed economy company “to undertake costly work to preserve lives ".
This is in order to “prioritize the preservation of funds”.