The Paris prosecutor had already estimated in March 2021 that “the vast majority of the facts were already prescribed” in this sprawling case of chlordecone, this insecticide massively used since the 1970s in the banana plantations of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
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The investigating judges of the public health center of the Paris judicial court notified the various stakeholders in the case last week of the end of the investigations in the investigation into the poisoning of the West Indies, franceinfo learned from a source familiar with the matter on Tuesday. April 5.
The prosecution must now say what direction it intends to take in its final indictment and then it will be up to the investigating judges to decide. The magistrates have for the moment announced their intention to close the file without pronouncing an indictment, thus directing it towards a dismissal.
In March 2021, the Paris prosecutor Rémi Heitz had already estimated in the newspaper France Antilles that “the vast majority of the facts denounced were already prescribed” from the filing of complaints for poisoning, endangering the lives of others and administration of harmful substances made by several Martinican and Guadeloupean associations in 2006.
Chlordecone is a pesticide which was banned in 1990 in France but which continued to be authorized by ministerial derogation until 1993 in the banana plantations of Martinique and Guadeloupe. It has caused significant and lasting pollution of the two islands, where the populations have one of the highest incidence rates of prostate cancer in the world.