TESTIMONY
Jean-François is convinced that his brother, who disappeared in 2013 in worrying circumstances, was actually murdered. Six years later, the case is not yet resolved. Jean-François expresses his anger at the microphone of "La libre antenne" on Europe 1. He tells Olivier Delacroix about his legal battle which he continues to wage so that we find the one who killed his brother.
>> Listen to Jean-François' testimony in full here
"My brother disappeared on November 30, 2013. It is not a voluntary disappearance. We are convinced, with the justice and the police, that he was murdered during this evening of November 30. It is a worrying disappearance To sum up, he was there that evening with three individuals in Saint-Etienne. My brother withdrew money from an ATM. Then they went to the Bessy plateau, on the heights of Saint-Etienne. Etienne.
" " He found himself in bad company at the wrong time " "According to the statements of the three individuals, they left my brother, at his request, on this isolated plateau and went to eat. Taken with remorse, they returned to the Bessy plateau and my brother was missing. They couldn't find him, so they went home. My brother did not know this place and he had frequented these people for a little year. My brother had no criminal record. He found himself in bad company at the wrong time.
The police investigation started well at the beginning, it was after that it went bad. We quickly realized that these three individuals were lying on many points. The driver of the car said he saw my brother the next day. It was obviously wrong. The police realized that he sold his vehicle very quickly, after having cleaned it extensively, including the trunk. The police seized the vehicle and carried out DNA tests.
" We come up against the inexplicable silence of justice "There has been a reaction to luminol, it is a product that can identify traces of blood. The laboratories could not determine whether the blood was of animal or human origin, because it was too deteriorated and not interpretable. We have been struggling for many years to request the analysis of hair elements that were present in this car and that have never been analyzed by the laboratories, because justice has not asked for it.
We claim it through our lawyer and we come up against the inexplicable silence of justice. There is also a CD which is essential in this file. It contains all the telephone fadettes of one of the three individuals who gives a different version of his two friends. With this CD one could easily have checked whether what they said was true or false, but there are no more CDs. Have they lost it? We have had no response from the justice system for years, despite the intervention of our lawyer.
" This is a case where there has been culpable negligence "I am angry with the police and the justice system because the search began two months after the report of the disappearance, when the three individuals indicated a specific location. The police took two months to go to see, and another two months to bring in a police dog squad. It is a case where there has been culpable negligence, where the work has not been done properly. These three people were placed under assisted witness status five years after the events.
Three investigating judges have followed one another. The second investigating judge decided to confront the three individuals, but only two of them were present. Throughout this investigation, there were blunders, errors, unexplained things. These people should have gone under assisted witness status after six months or a year. The elements, they had them: the telephony, testimonies, the car, DNA ... There were no more elements than there are now.
>> Find Olivier Delacroix's Free Antenna in replay and podcast here
The police told me that I was 'breaking their balls' with my file and that they would not go further than police custody. The second examining magistrate yelled at us when we entered her office, telling us that she would do everything to have access to the file, that she would not tell us anything. The families of the victims must be informed every six months of the progress of the investigation, but this has never been done.
The new investigating judge had the good idea to give the file for re-reading to the OCRPV (Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons) which is an organization responsible for handling unresolved cases. I think that if they had not given the file to the OCRPV, there would have been a dismissal, which worried us a lot. It is a real hope. This is what keeps us going, that this file is taken up, reread and that it moves forward.
" We can't grieve "We cannot grieve. We are in the unknown. I tell myself that it is not possible, they will not get away with it. [...] He was my only brother. Her son fights daily with me. He has the same conviction as me.
Justice takes refuge by telling us that nothing can be done because his body has not been found. There are cases where there was no body, and we were able to find the culprits. Some judges allegedly indicted them, others did not. Justice is also done by men and women. "