Unsanitary housing in Marseille: trial required for the tragedy of rue d'Aubagne

In his indictment on Thursday, which AFP was able to consult on Saturday, vice-prosecutor Michel Sastre requests the dismissal of the four people indicted before the Marseille criminal court, for involuntary homicide and involuntary injuries.

The magistrate, on the other hand, abandoned the charge of endangering others, a proposal which could exclude a good part of the approximately 70 civil parties currently on the file.

“If the requisitions were to be followed (by the three investigating judges responsible for this case), a pre-trial hearing could take place in the spring, for a possible opening of the trial this fall,” explained Saturday to the AFP the public prosecutor of Marseille Nicolas Bessone.

Four people could therefore be judged for these eight missing lives, in a tragedy symptomatic of the scale of the issue of unsanitary housing in the second largest city in France, in its very heart, just a stone's throw from the Old Port and the the Canebière.

First two individuals: Julien Ruas, deputy mayor responsible for prevention and risk management, when the city was still led by Jean-Claude Gaudin (LR); and Richard Carta, the architect appointed as an expert by the administrative court of Marseille, who had inspected the building at 65 rue d'Aubagne, where the eight victims lived, on October 18, 2018, barely three weeks before the tragedy. A visit that he had botched in an hour, without questioning any resident.

“Risk habituation phenomenon”

And two legal entities: Marseille Habitat, a mixed economy company from the city of Marseille which owns 63 rue d'Aubagne, an empty but totally dilapidated building which collapsed at the same time as 65; and the Liautard firm, the co-ownership trustee responsible for the management of 65.

If, in his indictment, Michel Sastre concedes that "no one could predict a collapse" of the two buildings, the magistrate considers that "it was established", during Mr. Carta's intervention, that these collapses were "inevitable" .

“The disintegration process was launched, and nothing could stop it”, and this since 2017, concludes the magistrate. But Mr. Carta “did not fulfill the minimum obligations of diligence of an expert, (...) because it was in the evening that he was in a hurry”.

"Mr. Carta had become accustomed to visiting dilapidated buildings, and +65+, he saw them regularly, perhaps thinking, like everyone who is not an expert, that a building does not collapse", continues the vice-prosecutor of Marseille, referring to “a routine drama”.

As for Mr. Ruas, he demonstrated during the investigation that "any notion of proactivity, responsibility and initiative in relation to his missions were completely foreign to him", scathes the prosecution's indictment.

And the magistrate reminded in passing the number of forgotten files in the service headed by this elected official, director of a retirement home by profession: 2.600 reports of buildings under suspicion of danger not treated, 230 buildings in serious and imminent danger not followed up .

Stigmatizing the "lack of curiosity" of certain experts, while "at least nine legal expertises" were carried out on the two collapsed buildings, between 2005 and 2018, Mr. Sastre's indictment is also severe for the two legal entities in cause.

Thus, when the Liautard firm undertook work at 65, "minimum cost cosmetics were favored", notes the magistrate, who "deduced that money was the reason which kept the trustee in this building".

Likewise, denouncing "a worrying phenomenon of habituation to risk" at Marseille Habitat, the indictment underlines that there was "unquestionably a deliberate refusal" by this mixed economy company "to undertake costly work to preserve lives". This is in order to “prioritize the preservation of funds”.