The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CIDPH) has asked France to suspend any decision to stop Vincent Lambert's care, pending a hearing on the merits. learned Saturday from the parents' lawyers.
This announcement comes four days after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had opened the way to the cessation of care of Vincent Lambert, hospitalized in Reims in a vegetative state for 10 years, rejecting the request for suspension of a decision of the Council of State.
"The application has been registered and the investigation begins before this international committee", a procedure that lasts "in practice several years", assured Me Jérôme Triomphe, one of the parents' lawyers.
The parents' lawyer denounces "a judicial and medical eagerness to kill Vincent"
The French State has six months to submit its observations to the committee. In the meantime, the latter is asking France to ensure that Vincent Lambert's diet and hydration are not suspended under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
"It is a great satisfaction: finally a specialized body will be able to decide on the merits of the case.It is normal that one kills a person handicapped on the grounds that it is handicapped? Is he in his place in a palliative care service, locked in a room (...) or is his place in a specialized unit? "Said Mr. Triomphe. He also said his "great relief" because "there is for more than a year a judicial and medical eagerness to kill Vincent".
Six years of judicial battle
A 42-year-old former psychiatric nurse, Vincent Lambert is in a vegetative state following a road accident in 2008. Decisions on a cessation of care have never been implemented, hampered by multiple imbroglios and recourse. successive legal The case, which has become a symbol of the debate on the end of life in France, has torn apart his family for six years: on the one hand, the parents, a half-brother and a sister oppose the cessation of care; on the other, his wife Rachel, his nephew François and five brothers and sisters of the patient denounce a therapeutic relentlessness.
The lawyer of François Lambert, Me Gérard Chemla, lamented a request "appalling". "This committee theodule comes to retry" again this case, "and in the name of human rights, violates the rights of a man who has been suffering for free for years (...)", he reacted . "I find it unbearable that today, more than 10 years after the accident, we can still be there (...) There is a moment when things have to stop."
The announcement appears as a new rebound when the ECHR rejected Tuesday the request of parents who challenged the decision of the State Council to suspend care.