The field survey is now almost complete. Nine days after his disappearance, little Emile remains untraceable, despite the significant resources mobilized. And nothing, at this stage, can explain how this child of 2 and a half years vanished, on July 8, from the hamlet of Haut-Vernet (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), on the flanks of the massif des Trois Evêchés, where he had just arrived for the summer holidays with his maternal grandparents. However, investigations are continuing. The flagrant investigation, opened on July 9 for “search for the causes of a worrying disappearance”, changed on Monday under the preliminary investigation.
This change of regime is “purely automatic”, specified the public prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains, Rémy Avon. Indeed, the flagrance investigation was opened urgently by the prosecution the day after Emile’s disappearance. However, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure, it “cannot continue for more than eight days », renewable once. Once this period has expired, the “investigations may continue in the forms of the preliminary investigation”. The duration of this investigation regime “cannot exceed two years”. However, it can be extended once for a maximum period of one year.
Less investigative powers
What does this change? Not much, according to Rémy Avon. The public prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains emphasizes that the opening of a preliminary investigation does not deprive the investigators of any investigative tool, whether searches or seizures.
However, this investigation regime reduces (a little) the powers of the investigators. “The major difference is that a flagrant investigation allows the use of coercion. That is to say that we can arrest, search, seize, without the consent of the person”, explains to 20 minutes Aurélien Martini, Deputy Public Prosecutor in Melun (Seine-et-Marne) and Deputy Secretary General of the USM (Union of Judges). “During a preliminary investigation, one cannot arrest or search”, except with “the authorization of the judicial authority, either of the public prosecutor, or of the judge of freedoms and detention”. This is done regularly in all the courts of France.
The public prosecutor of Digne-les-Bains could also have requested the opening of a judicial investigation for “search for the causes of the disappearance”, which would have been entrusted to an investigating judge. But this possibility “is not envisaged to date”, explained the magistrate to the Dauphine Libere. The file will therefore remain piloted, for the moment, by the prosecution. “The major interest of judicial information is to be able to launch telephone tapping with greater ease”, underlines Aurélien Martini.
“You have to have something in sight”
“But it’s important, when you open one, to have something in your sights,” he insists. “In cases of worrying disappearance, we open a judicial investigation if we are almost sure that it is a kidnapping but we do not know who the author is, or if there is a risk of flight abroad. , that sort of thing. When you don’t really know where you’re going and you’re trying to clarify things, it’s better to stay in a preliminary investigation phase. All the acts to be carried out can be carried out within this framework. »
Removal ? Accident ? Homicide? The gendarmes of the research section of Marseille and the IRCGN (National Gendarmerie Criminological Research Institute) are still trying to understand what happened on July 8th. And to find elements that would put them on a track. The 30 houses in the hamlet, attached to the village of Vernet, have already been searched, all the inhabitants questioned, all the vehicles visited. Investigators are now doing a meticulous job of analyzing the data collected during the first week of research. We must parse the 1,200 calls made to the dedicated telephone line and the considerable mass of information concerning the telephony of all the people who “limited” to Haut-Vernet on Saturday.