the former president of the commission for the protection of pentiti has “difficulty seeing concrete progress” after the government’s announcements

“I have difficulty seeing the concrete progress behind these announcements”declared Sunday April 28 on franceinfo Bruno Sturlése, magistrate currently at the Court of Cassation and former president of the national commission for the protection of repentants (2017-2023), after the announcements of the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti to better fight against organized crime.

On Sunday, the minister notably indicated that he wanted to create a “true status of the repentant”inspired by the model in force in Italy to fight against the mafia. “I would like to be delighted to see that the government is finally making the fight against organized crime a priority”said Mr. Sturlése. “But I say: ‘But again?'”.

A new sentence reduction scale

“I am a little surprised to see that the Minister of Justice says he discovered the usefulness of the repentant status during a trip to Italy, because we have had this status in France for twenty years”according to him. “Since 2018, I have alerted successive ministers to the inadequacies of this status. At the time, I was not heard.”

According to Bruno Sturlése, if this status is “an effective weapon for dismantling opaque and violent criminal structures”he is “underused” In France. “The real problem to be resolved is that we must increase the number of individuals who are ready to collaborate in justice”, he assured. Gold, “to attract applications (…) we need a convincing sentence reduction. In this regard, our current law is not at all convincing or attractive. We need to have a more convincing scale of sentence reduction” .