Victims’ associations called for a ban on the destruction of seals during a press conference. They also pleaded for the creation of a website to collect information on the disappearance of children.
France is the first country to have created, in March 2022, a national center dedicated to cold cases, recalls the court of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) where this unprecedented judicial division is installed. Among these 77 investigations in progress, the magistrates dig in particular the disappearances of two men, in 2011 then in 2012, while they were going to a music festival at Fort de Tamié in Savoie. Problem: the bag of one of them, Jean-Christophe Morin, was destroyed in 2014.
The destruction of this seal “will deprive us of information when there have been scientific advances” which could have made it possible to obtain new elements, deplores his sister, Adeline Morin, before the press, at the Nanterre court. France is sorely lacking “a policy on the conservation of seals”, abounds Didier Seban, lawyer representing several families.
Identify cold cases
These associations (Charazed, Christelle, Estelle, of the disappeared from Fort Tamié, Defense of the disabled from Yonne) also advocate the establishment of a website to collect information on the disappearances of children, then extended to all unsolved crimes. “Anyone with information can file it for the investigators,” anticipates Master Seban.
The first year of the cluster consisted of an unprecedented inventory of cold cases in the four corners of the country. But the Nanterre court has already warned that it could not absorb “more than a hundred” cases, “given the resources allocated”.
“This pole opens up tremendous hope”, welcomes Didier Seban, but “we consider that the funnel is not open enough. We have to raise the files and ask for more resources”. For this criminal, France is full of “several thousand” cold cases. Except that today, the authorities “are not able to give us a number of missing children and adults”, he laments.
The associations thus demand “the obligation for each prosecutor to keep a register of missing persons and unsolved crimes within their jurisdiction”. They also denounced “blockages” preventing the transfer of files to Nanterre because of local jurisdictions, citing in particular the courts of Reims and Chalon-sur-Saône. They call for the establishment of a remedy before the courts.