Investigators from the Lille judicial police assisted by divers from the firefighters probing the Deûle in 2011 after the disappearance of Jean-Meriadec Le Tarnec.

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M.LIBERT / 20 MINUTES

  • The journalist Tomas Statius publishes

    The Dead of the Deûle

    , a book devoted to the drowned case which had hit the headlines in Lille, in 2011.

  • He focuses his story on the extreme right circles implicated judicially, in 2017, in one of the cases.

  • His book retraces with precision the last evening of the victims.

They were not all urinating when they fell in the water.

This theory, underpinned in what has been called "the affair of the drowned people of the Deûle", shatters with the book of Tomas Statius.

But this is not the only element to which this Lille journalist twists his neck in his book 

The Dead of the Deûle

(editions JC Lattès) which has just been released on Wednesday.

After two years of in-depth investigation, Tomas Statius questions, with a real talent for writing, the hypothesis of the series of accidents.

He proposes a new reading of the file which had distressed Lille in 2011.

Tomas Statius, author of the book “The Dead of the Deûle”, released on January 20, 2021. - Matthieu Bidan / JC Lattès

Why go back to these ten-year-old cases?

I was a student at the Institute of Political Studies in Lille when these cases took place.

It made a deep impression on me, as did my family and friends.

We have always had doubts about the conclusions of the investigations.

In addition, shortly before, in 2009, a student from our school, Guillaume Mittre had also drowned in the Deûle.

Those who had pushed him had denounced themselves, but if that had not been the case, would we have found the culprits?

What conclusions do you come to?

I have no definitive answers to provide.

The objective is not to know if it is about murders or accidents, but to find the urban atmosphere which reigned in Lille, at the time.

The starting point of the book is that from a news item, we tell a story.

And in the North, it is that of the extreme right and the skins that seemed interesting to me to tackle.

Why ?

At the material time, Lille was plagued by regular nightly clashes between far-right and far-left activists, but also attacks, sometimes against a background of homophobia.

This phenomenon received little media coverage.

In my opinion, this atmosphere, this local political context was lacking in the handling of these cases.

Especially since in 2017, far-right activists were indicted in one of the cases ...

It was not until then that the media started talking about it.

In this book, I try to go further and trace a genealogy of the extreme right, in the hollow of these cases, to shed light on them in another way.

I have collected the testimonies of people who campaigned in these ultra-right movements.

Often, journalists are reluctant to question them because it is a sulphurous environment.

Yet they do speak and tell a lot of interesting things in the context of this investigation.

The book is also full of important details about the journey and the last night of each victim.

How did you pull up the thread?

It is the secret of the sources.

I tried to contact every witness to get their resentment today as well.

The indictments in 2017 again instilled doubt.

It is difficult to live for some relatives.

In general, I felt a real desire to put an end to this business.

It also allows us to tell how justice can be violent for people who are not used to how it works.

Lille

The criminal track confirmed in one of the cases of the drowned de la Deûle

Lille

"Ingrid, the mystery of the Deûle", the mother of a victim expresses her anger against justice in a book

  • Lille

  • Drowning

  • Books

  • Investigation

  • Far right

  • Deûle