A witness claims to have witnessed a conversation which supports the theory that the Minister of Labour was assassinated in 1979 and is relaunching the investigations according to France Inter.
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![A witness gestures as he points to where he found the body of French Minister Robert Boulin 40 years ago during a reconstruction of the discovery of his body, at Etang Rompu in Saint-Léger-en-Yvelines (Yvelines), October 28, 2019. (MARTIN BUREAU / AFP)](https://www.francetvinfo.fr/pictures/45eK_Ez4ttj8dvlbcGpfnBaojzM/0x401:5568x3531/432x243/2024/09/06/000-1lt2t0-66da9b4924620161976944.jpg)
In 2022, while the Versailles public prosecutor’s office had requested a dismissal of the case and the investigations into the Boulin affair were about to be closed, a witness came forward to the courts, relaunching the investigations, according to information from France Inter on Friday, September 6.
The man in question claims to have witnessed a conversation that supports the theory that the Minister of Labour was assassinated. According to him, members of the Civic Action Service (SAC) discussed “an accident”His story, collected by France Inter, is considered serious enough to relaunch the investigation.
In the 1970s, this witness frequented the Roi René libertine club in Yvelines. He became friends with a man he identified as Pierre Debizet, head of the SAC, considered the unofficial police of the RPR. “A few days after the minister’s death,” he says, “he invited me to have a glass of champagne at his table.”He claims that two SAC members were present: “They were introduced to me like this”.
On site, the men “they popped the champagne for having recovered the compromising files, they said among themselves”. Still according to this witness, “Pierre Debizet was not pleased and said to them ‘yeah but you killed him’ [alors que] the boss, that is to say Pasqua, had given the order to give him a dance'”.
That’s when “The head of the commando told Debizet that it was an accident, he had a cardiac arrest, he died in our arms and in the panic we threw him into the pond of Montfort-l’Amaury.”The witness says that the men “did not directly mention Boulin’s name” but that he made the connection “in the days that followed”.
To explain these years of silence, he claims that “The club was protected by the prosecutor at the time, who led the investigation into the Boulin affair. The proximity of this prosecutor to members of the SAC in the same club prompted me at the time to exercise the greatest caution”.
After more than 40 years of silence, this witness has been heard several times by the police over the last two years, as well as by the investigating judge in charge of the case. He now says: “at dusk of [sa] life”. This testimony “[il] owed it to the Boulin family”.
In 1979, Robert Boulin, Minister of Labor, was found dead in a pond in the Rambouillet forest. The Gaullist had just been accused of the conditions in which he had purchased land in Ramatuelle, in the Var, which he was about to defend himself against. The official theory was that he committed suicide, which his family has since contested. They claim that he was murdered. The investigation was reopened in 2015, after a new complaint from Robert Boulin’s daughter.