The Court of Cassation canceled, Friday, January 20, the indictment of the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn for "endangering others", she announced in a press release.
Agnès Buzyn was indicted in September 2021 by the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR).
An investigation into the government's management of the Covid-19 epidemic was launched in July 2020 following the filing of dozens of complaints.
Agnès Buzyn resigned from her post as Minister of Health in February 2020, at the very start of the health crisis, to devote herself to the municipal campaign in Paris.
She had been replaced by Olivier Véran.
"The offense of endangering others can only be charged against a person if a law or regulation imposes a particular obligation of prudence or security on him", indicates the Court of Cassation.
"This obligation must be objective, immediately perceptible and clearly applicable", she recalls.
"However, none of the texts to which the investigating committee referred to indict the former Minister of Health provides for any particular obligation of prudence or security."
Agnès Buzyn is now automatically placed under the status of "assisted witness", which means that she remains implicated but that no offense is more directly reproached to her.
“Very low” risk of spread
At the very beginning of 2020, when the world was scared after the alarming information coming from Wuhan, China, Agnès Buzyn, then Minister of Health, spoke at the Élysée Palace on January 24, 2020. "The risks of the spread of coronaviruses in the population are very weak", had assured this hematologist by training, before adding that this analysis could "evolve".
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In mid-February, she was replaced by Olivier Véran, leaving the government to run for mayor of Paris.
But a few days after her electoral defeat, while France was confined, she created an outcry by saying in Le Monde on March 17, 2020: "When I left the ministry, I was crying because I knew that the wave of the tsunami was in front of us".
"From the start, I only thought of one thing: the coronavirus. We should have stopped everything, it was a charade", she had still declared to World, about the electoral process.
Remarks confirmed in June 2020 before the National Assembly's commission of inquiry into the management of the health crisis: she had indicated that she had alerted the Élysée and Matignon in January to the potential "danger" of the coronavirus.
With Reuters and AFP
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