A year almost to the day after the indictment of the former prefect of Loire-Atlantique in the Steve Maia Caniço case, the Rennes prosecutor’s office has just announced that this same indictment was finally canceled. The former senior civil servant, who today works in the private sector, was the subject of a criminal investigation for “manslaughter” on the person of the young man found dead in the Loire after a fall following a police charge the evening of the 2019 Music Festival in Nantes.
Given “the absence of serious or concordant evidence”, the former prefect Claude d’Harcourt will therefore be placed under the status of assisted witness, an intermediate status between that of witness and that of indicteddecided the investigative chamber of the Rennes Court of Appeal.
The chief of staff and the commissioner prosecuted
Johann Mougenot, the former chief of staff of the prefect of Harcourt, remains indicted for manslaughter, confirmed the Rennes Court of Appeal. Both had lodged appeals contesting their indictment.
Grégoire Chassaing, the divisional commissioner who directed the police operation on the banks of the Loire on the evening of the facts, also remains indicted.
In addition, the Rennes Court of Appeal pronounced the “nullity of the expertise” of the Index agency, which had been requested by the examining magistrate to produce a video reconstruction of the intervention.
Steve Maia Caniço, 24-year-old extracurricular animator, had disappeared after a police operation intended to stop an electro evening on the banks of the Loire on the night of June 21 to 22, 2019. His body had been found, in the river, more than a month later, on July 29.