Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Thibaut Durand / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 6:45 p.m., March 21, 2024

A sort of reconstruction of the facts will take place on Thursday March 28 in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, eight months after the disappearance of little Émile. Planned “for a long time”, this operation will bring together “people who were there at the time of the events” last summer, according to a source close to the matter.

Eight months after the mysterious disappearance of little Emile, at the age of 2 and a half, in the hamlet of Haut-Vernet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, a "scenario", a sort of reconstruction of the facts, will take place on Thursday 28 March, we learned Thursday from a source close to the matter. Planned "for a long time", this operation will bring together "people who were there at the time of the events" last summer, in this hamlet of 25 inhabitants located at an altitude of 1,200 meters, on the slopes of the Trois-Evêchés massif, according to this source.

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Several members of the boy's family or even neighbors should therefore participate in this first full-scale scenario, in order to detect possible inconsistencies in the testimonies collected so far and allow the investigation, with multiple avenues, to move forward.

The little boy was last seen on July 8

Émile was last seen on July 8 around 5:15 p.m., in the only street in the hamlet, by two neighbors with conflicting stories, when he had just arrived for the summer vacation at his grandparents' second home. -maternal parents. First opened for a worrying disappearance in Digne-les-Bains, the investigation was quickly entrusted to two investigating judges from Aix-en-Provence then reclassified as criminal grounds for "kidnapping" and "sequestration".

Accident, fall, kidnapping? No trail has been put aside, even if that of the fatal fall has faded following the multiple searches organized in the surroundings of the hamlet, during which no body was found. As for the trail of Émile's maternal grandfather, whose name appeared in an investigation into alleged violence and sexual assault in the early 1990s within a private religious school in Pas-de-Calais, it has always been studied, “at the same level” as the others, this same source close to the matter told AFP.

The troubled past of the maternal grandfather

As revealed by Le

Canard Enchaîné

on Wednesday, the grandfather had been placed under the status of assisted witness as part of this investigation into facts which allegedly took place in the early 1990s within the religious community of the Sainte -Cross of Riaumont in Liévin. Very pious, Philippe V. joined there as a scout leader before becoming "Brother Philippe", responsible with other people, between 1991 and 1994, for ensuring discipline reigned within this Catholic establishment which then became the subject to administrative closure at the end of the 2010s.

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In total, 11 people were indicted as part of the four judicial inquiries opened around this establishment, in particular for "rape", "sexual assault" and "mistreatment".