Two families of gendarmes killed at the end of 2020 in Ambert (Puy-de-Dôme) filed a complaint against X for “manslaughter“Said the Clermont-Ferrand prosecutor’s office on Monday May 9. These two complaintsare under study“, specified to AFP Éric Maillaud, public prosecutor. They were filed by lawyers for the families of gendarmes Cyrille Morel and Arno Mavel, shot dead by a madman at the end of 2020 in Ambert.
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Me Xavier Herman, lawyer for the third deceased gendarme, told AFP that he had also filed a complaint against X for the same reason. “The families need to know the whole truth, that the gray areas be clarified because they feel that the hierarchy has tended to underestimate the gravity of the events“, declared Me Gilles-Jean Portejoie, lawyer of the relatives of Cyrille Morel. According to him, theywonder about the fact that not everything has been done to ensure the safety of the gendarmes engaged in the intervention“.
Do “that it does not happen again”
For Anne-Laure Lebert, lawyer for the family of Arno Mavel, “certain elements cast doubt on the Gendarmerie’s desire for transparency. The goal is to shed light on this affair so that it does not happen again.“. Contacted by AFP in Paris, the national gendarmerie did not respond immediately. On the night of December 22 to 23, 2020, Frédérik L., 48, shot dead three gendarmes and seriously injured a fourth, while they intervened to help the extremist’s companion. Victim of domestic violence, she then took refuge on the roof of the family home.
Heavily armed, the man set fire to the building and then fled in his vehicle, before being found dead with a gun in hand, about 1.5 kilometers from his home. The information gathered during the tragedy by the CORG (gendarmerie operations and intelligence center), according to which the madman was heavily armed, would have been only partially transmitted to the men on the ground, according to elements of the investigation quoted Monday by the regional daily The mountain.
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“The investigation shows that there were successive failures to transmit information that evening. The instruction to wait for the GIGN (national gendarmerie intervention group, editor’s note) was never given and a 21-year-old gendarme was sent to a war scene who had hardly ever handled a weapon.», Considers Me Lebert. As part of the judicial investigation for “assassination” and “assassination attemptopened after the fact, the families had unsuccessfully demanded a reconstruction. Their lawyers filed an appeal in cassation on this point.
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