The French driver Philippe Boutron, seriously injured in the explosion of his vehicle before the start of the Dakar 2022, is “out of a coma”, his family confided on Thursday.
“He is seriously injured, he has already come out of a coma,” said his son Benoît Boutron on RMC. The luck that we have, with my relatives, is that we can visit him daily, he is seriously injured in both legs and we will know more in ten days. We could see it, we can exchange, for the moment it remains limited. It takes time to recover, but things are progressing little by little. ”
Tuesday in Paris, the national anti-terrorism prosecution announced it had opened a preliminary investigation for “attempted assassinations in connection with a terrorist enterprise.”
The investigations concern the explosion that occurred on December 30 in Jeddah (central western Saudi Arabia), which hit a vehicle occupied by a crew of five Frenchmen and seriously injured the driver, Philippe Boutron, 61, repatriated after being operated in Saudi Arabia. He was treated at the Percy military hospital in Clamart, near Paris, then was placed in an artificial coma to relieve his pain.
Saudi authorities on Saturday ruled out a criminal act to explain what they called an “accident.”
For its part, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on its nationals to be “maximum vigilant”, adding on the contrary that “the hypothesis of a criminal act” was “not ruled out” and recalling that “the terrorist threat persists. (a) in Saudi Arabia ”.