CHERBOURG (awp/afp) – Naval Group (ex-DCN) paid tribute on Sunday in Cherbourg (Manche) to the victims of the Karachi attack, twenty years after the tragedy which claimed the lives of 11 employees of the former DCN and subcontractors, noted an AFP journalist.
“We express on behalf of all the employees of the Naval Group site in Cherbourg our emotion still intact”, declared Jean-Luc France, director of the site, in front of around forty people, mainly relatives of the victims or survivors seriously injured in the attack.
Mr. France then laid a wreath “to our missing colleagues” in front of a plaque on which the names of the 11 deceased French workers are engraved.
On May 8, 2002, 15 people died in the explosion of the bus which daily took the employees of the Naval Construction Department (DCN) and its subcontractors from their hotel to the construction site of a submarine sold to the Pakistan by the DCN. Twelve people were seriously injured.
“I’m in so much pain. It destroyed my life and my family,” Marie Dupont, widow of one of the victims, who came with her three children and several of her grandchildren, told AFP. “I can’t take it anymore,” she added, when asked about the investigation that has been going on for 20 years without the motive for the attack being clearly identified.
A second ceremony is scheduled for 2:30 p.m., organized by the town hall, in front of a monument in memory of the victims, behind the City of the Sea.
In the middle of the morning a white rose had been placed in front of this stele which also contains the names of the eleven victims, noted AFP. One of the injured, who is boycotting the two ceremonies, said he laid a rose on Sunday morning.
The former PS deputy mayor of Cherbourg Bernard Cazeneuve is expected at the second ceremony.
Several injured and relatives of victims boycott the ceremony organized each year by Naval Group. They are convinced that the ex-DCN and the State are putting “sticks in the wheels” to this investigation.
Two avenues are today being explored by the investigators: that of an attack perpetrated by Al-Qaeda and that of Pakistani reprisals after the cessation of retrocommission payments within the framework of a contract for the sale of submarines by France. in Pakistan.
In 2002 the DCN was 100% owned by the State. It has since become Naval Group, 62% owned by the state.
clc/hdu/vk