The families of victims will finally be able to close the file on the organs removed

2023-12-08 05:02:21

Amie, 12 years old, was killed on the Promenade des Anglais on the evening of July 14, 2016. And “part of my daughter is still in buckets in a fridge. Can I leave it like this? It is my duty as a father to carry her completely to the ground,” confides Thierry Vimal, who is one of the four families of victims of the Nice attack who are still awaiting the return of the organs taken from their loved ones during the autopsies. Everyone will meet next week in Paris, with the hope of finally closing this painful case.

After the ram truck attack which left 86 dead and more than 400 injured on the Promenade des Anglais, an autopsy was carried out on fourteen victims. A very large number of their organs had been removed and placed under seal, without the families being informed.

Rule out any suspicion of medical negligence or gunshot wounds

During the trial, former anti-terrorism prosecutor François Molins explained that these autopsies aimed to establish the causes of death when they were not obvious, or to rule out any suspicion of medical negligence or gunshot wounds. But he acknowledged that taking small samples of the organs would have been enough and said he was in favor of DNA testing. Some families had already obtained the unsealing and buried the remains that had been returned to them, but four families requested these tests to be certain of recovering the correct organs.

The procedure, financed by the victims’ compensation fund, still took many months and the families were invited on Tuesday by the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office to communicate the results. Thierry Vimal then hopes to have confirmation that the buckets waiting for him in a specialized laboratory in Nantes indeed contain his daughter’s organs: brain, heart, lungs, vocal cords, liver, spleen, kidneys, uterus…

They should then be placed in a small coffin and placed in a grave, next to the ashes of Amie, cremated after the attack. Amie’s father hopes it can be done before Christmas. “It’s about time. It’s like a funeral procession that has lasted for seven years,” he explains.