Chlordecone, a pesticide banned in France in 1990 but which continued to be authorized in Martinique and Guadeloupe until 1993, caused significant pollution on the two islands.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has requested a dismissal of the investigation into the large-scale poisoning linked to the use of chlordecone in the French West Indies, he indicated to AFP on Friday November 25, confirming a close source folder.
This step had been expected since the Parisian investigating judges of the public health center had announced at the end of March the closure of their investigations without having carried out indictments. Banned in mainland France in 1990, chlordecone continued to be used in the West Indies until 1993 when it is suspected of having caused a wave of cancers.
More than 90% of the adult population contaminated by chlordecone
In 2006, several Martinican and Guadeloupean associations had filed a complaint for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances. A judicial investigation had been opened at the Paris court in 2008.
“A decision to dismiss, far from being a denial of justice, constitutes a judicial decision in its own right after examination and analysis of all the elements of the procedure concerned.“, takes care to underline the prosecution in its final indictment dated Thursday, consulted by AFP. “Nor is it the assertion that no harmful results have been caused by the use of chlordecone during the period of its authorization and subsequently.“, he adds.
But the public prosecutor considers in particular that the facts are prescribed, in particular with regard to poisoning, or not characterized, concerning the administration of harmful substances, which prevents any prosecution.
For the prosecution, the complaints proceeded in particular from a “need for information on all the elements that led to the regulation of chlordecone“, to which the magistrates tried to answer “as comprehensively as possible“. Already in 2021, the investigating judges had informed several civil parties of their analysis according to which the facts would in their vast majority be prescribed.
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Two months later, Rémy Heitz, then Paris prosecutor, had estimated in an interview with the daily France Antilles that “the vast majority of the facts denounced were already time-barredas soon as complaints are filed.
The announcement of the end of the investigations without any questioning had raised an outcry at the end of March. The possible prescription of public action has also already aroused indignation and anger in the West Indies, particularly in Martinique where 5,000 to 15,000 people had, for example, marched in the streets of Fort-de-France at the end of February 2021.
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Calls for mobilization
“Who are we kidding in this case? Martiniquans will have to react, well beyond the judicial aspect and mobilize in the street“, reacted Me Louis Boutrin, lawyer of the Martinican association “For an Urban Ecology“, civil party.
“We have already made an appointment on December 10 to mobilize“, announced to AFP Philippe Pierre-Charles, one of the spokespersons of Lyannaj Pou Dépolyé Matinik, a collective of associations engaged in the fight against chlordecone. The decision of the prosecution is for him “a crime upon a crime“.
The Caribbean populations in particular have one of the highest prostate cancer incidence rates in the world. These prostate cancers linked to exposure to chlordecone were recognized as an occupational disease in December, paving the way for compensation for farmers and agricultural workers.
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