Great disappointment for the complaining communities and associations.

The investigating judges of the public health center of the Paris court pronounced on March 25 the end of the investigations in the investigation into the poisoning of the West Indies with chlordecone.

No indictment has been pronounced, which directs the investigation towards a dismissal, according to sources familiar with the matter.

This notice of end of information, however, opens a period allowing the parties to the proceedings to indicate their intention to make observations, request acts, etc., before the requisitions of the Paris public prosecutor's office and the final decision of the investigating judges.

Possible prescription of the facts

In 2006, several Martinican and Guadeloupean associations had filed a complaint for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances.

But 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.

Chlordecone, a pesticide banned in France in 1990 but which continued to be authorized in the banana fields of Martinique and Guadeloupe by ministerial derogation until 1993, caused significant and long-lasting pollution of the two islands.

More than 90% of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by chlordecone, according to Public Health France, and the West Indian populations have one of the highest incidence rates of prostate cancer in the world.

“The turn taken by this scandalous affair is worrying because we are moving towards a denial of justice”, denounced Tuesday in a press release the lawyers of the association “For an urban ecology”, Me Raphaël Constant, Corinne Boulogne Yang-Ting, Ernest Daninthe and Georges Louis Boutrin.

“After fifteen years of investigation and in the current state of the law in force, no indictment has been pronounced which leaves to fear a strong probability of a decision of dismissal”, they worry. .

Health

Chlordecone: The territorial collectivity of Martinique asks the judges to come

Justice

West Indies: A 2006 complaint for chlordecone poisoning could be prescribed

  • Justice

  • Chlordecone scandal

  • Martinique

  • Investigation

  • pesticides

  • Cancer

  • West Indies

  • Guadeloupe

  • Poisoning