A 38-year-old Marseillais obsessed with geopolitics and without a criminal record appears from Monday before the assizes of Bouches-du-Rhône, five years after having caused an explosive fire in a petrochemical site on the day of the National Holiday.
On July 14, 2015, around 3 a.m., two explosions had caused the fire of tanks containing tens of thousands of cubic meters of flammable products, on this site of the American group LyondellBasell.
A "political" motivation
Immense plumes of black smoke were visible for miles around and the firefighters had taken long hours to put out the fire, which did not claim any victims. The author, Mathieu Boasso, 38, could not be arrested until a year later, after an investigation which did not attribute any terrorist motivation to him, despite his “political” claim.
Mathieu Boasso acknowledged the attack on the petrochemical site, as well as the ten other facts alleged against him: robberies to obtain explosives and detonators, attacks on ATMs and against a meat curing plant in Tarare, in the Rhone.
An “extraordinary cold blood”
This man, whose investigators underlined "the methodical organization" as well as "the insurance and the cold blood out of the ordinary" must appear until March 13. He faces 20 years in prison.
With his attacks, carried out at night, far from homes and which left neither dead nor injured, Mathieu Boasso claims to have wanted to influence the international policy of France, fearing that an alignment with the United States would cause new world war, in a context of tensions with Russia.
A former journalist
A thesis that this admirer of the foreign policy of former president Jacques Chirac has long declined before the investigators, but which should not prevent the court from exploring other aspects of a personality than one of his lawyers, Jean-Baptiste de Gubernatis, described as "rich and complex".
Psychiatric assessments have excluded any "alteration" or "abolition" of his discernment, which allows him to be tried criminally, despite "immature narcissism". Trained in journalism with the dream of "weighing positively on society", the man had worked briefly on the radio and then converted to printing.
A security issue
He did not discover his father's identity until 18 years old. He then became interested in Islam, which he says has nothing to do with his actions. Her badly endured divorce seems to have played a role in her drift.
Today, Mathieu Boasso “wants to finish, to be judged. He wants to have words with regard to the victims, ”assures Me Gubernatis. In addition, the question of the safety of the petrochemical site, located in one of the largest and most sensitive industrial zones in France, around the Etang de Berre, will not fail to be raised, in view of the ease with which Mathieu Boasso entered it.
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- Marseilles
- Explosion
- Oil
- Fire
- Assize Court
- Berre l'Etang