All the defendants were heard, the interrogations ended on Monday April 29. The trial of the derailment of the TGV Est, which occurred in Eckwersheim (Bas-Rhin), on November 14, 2015, during a testing phase prior to the opening of the line to the public, is slowly approaching its end, scheduled for the 16 may. And if the 31e chamber of the Paris criminal court adhered to the statements of the accused, it would have to conclude that no one is responsible for this accident which left eleven dead and forty-two injured. Or that everyone is, but only others.
At the beginning of April, the three defendants present in the cabin on the day of the accident were interviewed: Denis T., the driver of the TGV, Francis L. and Philippe B., two executives responsible for informing him respectively about braking points and about various particularities of the route. Each had shifted the blame to one or the other of his co-defendants, or even to both, who were necessarily more at fault than him.
From April 22 to 29, it was the turn of the representatives of the three companies being prosecuted to take turns at the helm: SNCF, Systra – a subsidiary of the first, responsible for organizing the tests – and SNCF Réseau – manager of the track on which they were unfolding. Three legal entities, tried for homicide and involuntary injuries due to “failures which definitely led to inappropriate actions by the driving team in terms of braking which were directly at the origin of the accident”.
Same atmosphere as during the hearings of the first three defendants, each declining all responsibility, and emphasizing that of their comrades, all enhanced, unlike the railway workers heard at the beginning of the month, with a strong dose of wooden language and technocratic jargon. “You are the sixth at this bar, and you are the sixth who tells us: “It’s not us””ended up getting annoyed by Gérard Chemla, civil party lawyer, when faced with the representative of SNCF Réseau, Patrick Offroy, who had just spent three hours, Monday April 29, contesting that his employer could have failed in its obligations in terms of security, and to repeat abundantly that Systra had failed in its own.
“A dialogue of the deaf”
Questioned a week earlier, the Systra representative, Nicolas Massart, had spent two days fighting against each of the failures accused of his company – in risk assessment, staff training, choice of speed of the train, communication with the driving team, etc. “You believe that there was no possibility for Systra to have any influence on the situation which led to the accident?asked the president.
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