They saw their lives go up in smoke. And since October 30, 2007, they have been trying to obtain answers from the courts. That day, a little before 2 p.m., the driver of an excavator accidentally punctured a gas pipe, causing a spark which triggered an explosion. The building located at the crossroads of rue Jules Guesde and rue Roger Salengro, in Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis), is blown away. A 56-year-old man, a customer of the restaurant L’Étoile du Centre, was killed and around fifty people injured, often seriously burned. Faced with the scale of the disaster, the Minister of the Interior at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie, and the Prime Minister, François Fillon, had also visited the site.
Almost fifteen years have passed. And the victims are still waiting for the trial date. The investigation has however been completed since 2018. The investigating judges decided to refer the driver of the machine to the criminal court as well as the company STPS, a subcontractor of Gaz de France, which had not buried this channel deep enough. On the other hand, the Bourgeois company, which was responsible for carrying out the work and which had been put on trial for a time, will not be judged, these magistrates decided. The STPS company appealed against this referral to corrections. And the hearing was only held on Tuesday, before the investigating chamber, more than three years later.
A judgment expected on April 21
“Between 2018 and early 2022, the file was only on a table in the Paris investigation chamber pending a hearing. We lost more than three years during which nothing happened, ”deplores Me Stella Bisseuil, who defends one of the victims. Tuesday, with other lawyers for the civil parties, she pleaded for the maintenance of the indictment of the company STPS. “If she was not indicted, only the driver of the machine would appear. He could be held responsible for the whole situation while there is a hierarchy, other stakeholders in this site who also had their share of responsibility, ”she underlines.
The lawyer is also surprised that the Bobigny prosecutor’s office, which had nevertheless requested that the Bourgeois company be prosecuted, did not appeal the dismissal of the case rendered by the investigating judges. “This case has been abandoned by the Bobigny prosecution, this is what I conclude. The prosecutor has a position which is not that of the investigating judges, which happens. But in this case, we go all the way. He had to take up appeal, which he did not. The investigating chamber is due to issue its judgment on April 21. “The case will come back to the Bobigny prosecutor who may very well take another two or three years to find us a hearing date, worries Me Bisseuil. For a case that dates back to 2007. I think we’ve broken all records. »
“It’s a real fiasco”
The date of the trial is awaited by the victims who are still waiting to be compensated. “They were only partially. Until we know who is responsible, we don’t know which insurance company should cover. In an emergency, we asked the insurance companies to advance part of the compensation. They will turn against the responsible insurance in the end, ”explains the lawyer for the young woman victim. The inhabitants of the building, she regrets, “lost all their belongings. They have significant material losses which have not been compensated to date. It is a real fiasco”.
For the lawyer, the judicial treatment of this case “corresponds to the way in which people are treated in Seine-Saint-Denis”. “In the cases that take place in Paris and which concern another type of population, they are better treated than them. An allusion to the file of the explosion of the rue de Trévise in 2019.
Contacted by 20 minutes, the lawyers for Bourgeois and STPS did not respond to our repeated requests.