for nearly seven years, the families of the victims are fighting for justice to be done. Friday, they got a victory. The co-investigating judges in charge of investigating the disaster rail of Brétigny-sur-Orge (Essonne), which has been 7 dead and dozens injured in July 2013, ordered a lawsuit against the SNCF and a railroader, announced Friday the public prosecutor of Evry.
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both are sent to the criminal court for homicide and unintentional injuries. This railroad worker of 31 years was at the head of a brigade in charge of the inspection of the tract at the time of the derailment. It was he who had conducted the last audit, eight days before the disaster. “The trial is planned in the year 2021,” said the prosecutor in a press release.
The “mistakes” committed by the SNCF ?
The examining magistrates, who have followed the requisitions of the parquet, points to “mistakes” committed by the SNCF Mobilities and SNCF Network (which was the successor to réseau ferré de France, manager of the lanes), ” by choice or inaction which led to the absence of a renewal parts switch “. On 12 July 2013, the train-City Paris-Limoges had derailed at the station of Bretigny-sur-Orge (Essonne), when a splint – a sort of big clip that holds two rails in a consecutive – had rotated, causing the accident.
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A shock to 137 km/h, which killed three passengers of the train, four among the people who were waiting on the wharf, and wounded dozens of others, is one of the worst disasters in rail in France. The five and a half years of investigation, completed in January 2019, had given rise to a battle of expertise and counter-expertise, with a challenge : to determine whether the derailment was predictable.
All of those ordered by the justice concluded that the train had derailed because of a piece of track, poorly maintained, which had crumbled over time. The SNCF, which has mandated other expertise, for its part, considers that the assembly in question transferred abruptly due to a defect in the steel – an assumption that the dédouanerait.
