Driver injured, attack, investigation … what we know after the explosion on the Dakar

So what happened in Jeddah? Thursday, December 30, two days before the start of the Dakar, which has established its bivouac in Saudi Arabia since 2020, an assistance vehicle from the French team Sodicars Racing exploded, with six people on board. The French pilot Philippe Boutron was seriously injured in the explosion, which occurred near the hotel, where its occupants had just spent the night. The crew went to the site, where the technical verifications of the cars set out to take part in the most famous rally-raid in the world took place. A serious incident which shook the paddock.

It was to be his ninth Dakar. Among the six occupants of the vehicle which exploded, only one of them was injured: the buggy pilot Philippe Boutron, who was sitting behind the wheel. The one who is also the president of US Orléans, the National club, the third echelon of French football, was severely hit in the legs by the explosion. Immediately treated and operated on in a military hospital in Jeddah, the 61-year-old businessman was repatriated to France on Monday, January 3. He has since been hospitalized at the Percy army instruction hospital, in Clamart, in the Hauts-de-Seine.

Philippe Boutron, who “has damaged legs”, has been “placed in an artificial coma so as to alleviate his suffering”, according to a press release from the Sodicars team, posted online Tuesday, January 4. “At the request of his wife Anne and his children, this health report will be the only one”, we are told. “He’s not doing well at all”, had confided his relatives, approached earlier by The Parisian. “He was not just injured in the calf like we said at the beginning. He was badly burned and torn in the lower limbs. We are very afraid that the doctors will have to amputate him from both legs. “

For the time being unexplained, this mysterious explosion could be the consequence of an attack. Despite the denial of the Saudi authorities, who very quickly rejected everything “criminal suspicion “, nothing allows to exclude a “malicious act”, explained the organizers. “The hypothesis of a criminal act is not ruled out”, affirmed the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recalling that “The terrorist threat persists in Saudi Arabia.” The thesis of the explosive device, placed voluntarily under the assistance vehicle of Sodicars Racing, is in any case favored by the team and those close to Philippe Boutron.

All the testimonies of survivors or members of the team go in this direction. “It’s an attack, we were blown up”, told AFP the pilot Thierry Richard, who was in the passenger seat. “We saw the impact under the vehicle. We are not stupid, we know that it is also an explosion. We took a breath in the car.” “Call it what you want, but it is indeed a malicious act. An explosive device has been planted there.”, abounded in the columns of The Republic of the Center Joël Pally, also present in the car. Mayeul Barbet, Philippe Boutron’s co-pilot, to whom he provided first aid, is also convinced: it is a “attack”. “The bomb placed in the spar under the crankset exploded”, he said.

“It is indeed a load that there was under the spar of the car which farted”, confirmed to France Bleu Richard Gonzalez, the boss of Sodicars Racing. “I was there, I have the photos, I saw everything, it is indeed a voluntary act, there is no doubt about it.” “It’s an attack, that’s clear”, continued the press officer Marie-France Estenave with France 3. “The others have nothing, but they saw the shell of the bomb wedged in the spar before the vehicle was seized by the investigators”.

These statements by direct witnesses and the elements reported led the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) to seize it. A preliminary investigation was opened, Tuesday, January 4, in Paris, to “attempted assassinations in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. The investigations into the causes of this explosion were entrusted to the Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).