(Paris) France announced Tuesday that it will not extradite to Canada a French Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting young Inuit in the 1960s.
Posted at 5:02 p.m.
Updated at 5:19 p.m.
The French Ministry of Justice unsurprisingly explained to a delegation of Inuits, who came to Paris to support this request, that it refused the extradition, requested by Canada, of the French priest Joannès Rivoire, 92 years old.
Joannès Rivoire, who resides in Lyon (center-east), but also has Canadian nationality, is the subject of an extradition request filed in early August by Ottawa. He is accused of sexually assaulting young Inuit in the 1960s when he was on a mission in the Canadian North, charges he disputes.
“It was recalled that, in accordance with its constitutional tradition, France does not extradite its nationals”, declared the Ministry of Justice, after the meeting with the diplomacy adviser to Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti.
The Chancellery stresses that “France stands ready to respond to any request for mutual legal assistance made to it by Canada or, where appropriate, to act within the framework of a denunciation of the facts that may be made to it, subject nevertheless to ‘examine the possible prescription of the facts’.
“For a judicial investigation to be opened in France, the Canadian judicial authorities must denounce the facts, which is not the case at this stage”, also indicated a source familiar with the matter.
So far the priest, who left Canada in 1993 after 33 years in the field, has never been worried. After a first arrest warrant between 1998 and 2017 for the sexual assault of three minors, he has been the subject of a second arrest warrant in Canada since February, after the filing of a new complaint in September 2021 for an assault. sexual intercourse which occurred approximately 47 years ago.
The delegation was also received by the president of the Conference of Religious of France (which represents 450 Catholic institutes or congregations) Véronique Margron and the deputy head of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), a congregation to which Joannès belongs. Rivoire.
During this interview, the Inuit “asked [aux OMI] to dismiss Joannès Rivoire from the religious state,” said Ms.me Margron to AFP.
For her part, she indicated that she had proposed the creation of a “commission of historians” to establish the “functionings and dysfunctions” that may have taken place within the Oblates, to collect all possible documents (archives, etc. ), this “in close connection” or “with the endorsement of the Inuit community”.
On Wednesday, the Inuit delegation will meet, at the headquarters of the congregation in Lyon, the head of OMI. Joannès Rivoire “for the moment agrees to see the delegation”, according to Mme Margon.