The Paris prosecutor’s office requested, Friday, November 25, a dismissal of the investigation into the poisoning of West Indians with chlordecone, a pesticide authorized in banana plantations until 1993, considering in particular that the facts denounced in 2006 by Martinican associations and Guadeloupe were prescribed.
Eight months after the announcement by the Parisian investigating judges of the public health center of the closure of their investigations without having carried out examinations, the public prosecutor considered that there was no reason to prosecute anyone in this case, learned Agence France-Presse (AFP) from a source familiar with the matter. Information confirmed by the Paris prosecutor’s office.
It is now up to the investigating judges to make their final decision in this very sensitive case in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where more than 90% of the adult population is contaminated with chlordecone, according to Public Health France.
“We have already sharpened our weapons”warns AFP Harry Durimel, lawyer, writer of the initial complaint against chlordecone poisoning and environmentalist mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre, pending the order of the investigating judges. “The population must know that, in this fight for which we committed twenty years ago, we have never given up”he added.
Ministerial derogation
Banned in France in 1990, this pesticide continued to be authorized in the banana fields of Martinique and Guadeloupe by ministerial derogation until 1993. It caused significant and long-lasting pollution of the two islands and is suspected of having caused a cancer wave.
In 2006, several Martinican and Guadeloupean associations had filed a complaint for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances. A judicial investigation had been opened at the Paris court in 2008.
“A decision to dismiss, far from being a denial of justice, constitutes a judicial decision in its own right after examination and analysis of all the elements of the procedure concerned”takes care to underline the prosecution in its final indictment dated Thursday and consulted by AFP. “Nor is it the assertion that no harmful results have been caused by the use of chlordecone during the period of its authorization and subsequently”he adds.
Prescribed facts
But the public prosecutor considers in particular that the facts are prescribed, with regard to poisoning for example, or uncharacterized, concerning the administration of harmful substances, which prevents any prosecution.
For the public prosecutor’s office, the complaints stemmed in particular from a “need for information on all the elements that presided over the regulation of chlordecone”to which the magistrates tried to respond “as comprehensively as possible”.
Already in January 2021, the investigating judges in charge of the case had informed several civil parties of their analysis according to which the facts would be overwhelmingly prescribed.
Two months later, Rémy Heitz, then Paris prosecutor, had estimated in an interview with the daily France-Antilles what “the vast majority of the facts denounced were already prescribed” upon filing of complaints.
The announcement of the end of the investigations without any questioning had already raised an outcry at the end of March. The possible prescription of public action has also already aroused indignation and anger in the West Indies, particularly in Martinique where 5,000 to 15,000 people had, for example, marched in the streets of Fort-de-France at the end of February 2021.
“Who are we kidding in this case? Martiniquans will have to react, well beyond the judicial aspect, and mobilize in the street “reacted Louis Boutrin, lawyer for the Martinican association For an urban ecology, civil party.
“We have already made an appointment on December 10 to mobilize”, for his part, announced to AFP Philippe Pierre-Charles, one of the spokespersons for Lyannaj pou dépolyé Matinik, a collective of associations committed to the fight against chlordecone pollution. The decision of the prosecution is for him “a crime upon a crime”.
The Caribbean populations in particular have one of the highest prostate cancer incidence rates in the world. However, these prostate cancers linked to exposure to chlordecone were recognized as an occupational disease in December 2021, paving the way for compensation for farmers and agricultural workers.