The investigating judge told the family that she would not go to Japan in the footsteps of the 30-year-old and that the investigation was about to end.
The investigating judge in charge of the investigation into the disappearance, never clarified, of the French tourist Tiphaine Véron in Japan in 2018, has completed her investigations, we learned on Sunday from the family lawyer, a “shockfor his relatives who want to continue the investigation on their side.
The investigating judge based in Poitiers, the city of origin of Ms. Véron, “has notified the parties that it does not intend to carry out any additional acts itself in the context of the information (…), it wishes to close its information“, Me Antoine Vey told AFP, confirming information from the JDD.
Read also“I still believe in it, I will never abandon it”: the relentless quest of the brother of Tiphaine Véron, who disappeared in Japan in 2018
The end of the investigations opens a period during which the parties can make observations or request acts of investigation, before the requisitions of the prosecution and the final decision of the investigating judge. But for Damien Véron, the brother of the disappeared, the investigation “on the French side, it’s over (…) we’re going to have to carry out actions in Japan, with private investigators on site, it’s going to be a colossal job“.
The criminal hypothesisnever really explored»
“It’s a shock. It’s incomprehensible. This possibility of education in France, (…) it was the only possibility of unraveling this story“, he explained, on behalf of the family who had already called on the service of a former French gendarme converted into the private sector. Tiphaine Véron disappeared on July 29, 2018 in Nikko, a tourist city in northeastern Japan surrounded by hills and woods with famous sanctuaries. Then aged 36, the young woman, epileptic, had left her hotel to go for a walk, leaving behind her suitcase, her passport and her sightseeing program.
For almost four years, the searches carried out by his relatives on the spot have yielded nothing, no more than the judicial investigations carried out from Poitiers and in Japan, which had led a team of French police officers to go there in May 2019. He several months ago, the investigating judge had refused to go to Japan in turn, a trip supported by the prosecution and judged “essentialby the family. This refusal was confirmed in December 2021 by the investigating chamber of the Poitiers Court of Appeal.
“We are not suspended from the decision of this investigating judge, we are just saying that it is a pity not to offer us the expertise of a French judge and his powers of investigation“Commented Me Vey on Sunday. In this case, the family criticizes the Japanese police for the lack of resources they have devoted to the investigations, considering that witnesses have been neglected and that the criminal trail has not been seriously explored.
“The Elysée and the prosecution were on our side. We killed ourselves for four years to keep all the actors mobilized. We are disgusted. It’s disrespectful to our work“, added Damien Véron about the end of the investigations. Tiphaine Véron’s family had also sought the help of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, who had raised the matter with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga during the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021.