The trial of the collapses of rue d'Aubagne began Thursday afternoon in Marseille, in a packed room, a sign of the “considerable trauma” that this drama of unworthy housing and its eight deaths has inflicted on the city, according to the words of the president of the court.
If “the trials constitute tests, they also bring reflection (…) and aim to prevent the occurrence, in the future, of similar facts”, recalled Pascal Gand, in front of some 400 people, a record in this “extraordinary trials” room of the Marseille judicial court.
The magistrate also said he was aware of the “expectations” raised by the case in France's second city, one of the poorest and in which slumlords thrive on precariousness.
At the beginning of the afternoon, an almost silent demonstration brought together several dozen people in front of the court. Public criers read messages, collected from anonymous people, like that of Anouchka: “After the fear, the stupor, the tears, we are left with anger”. On one of the main arteries of the center, a banner “support, justice and truth” was displayed.
In the room, in addition to the public, dozens of black robes defending the 16 defendants or representing the 87 civil parties in this trial which is due to last until mid-December.
The family of Ouloume Saïd Hassani, this 54-year-old mother who died when she had just dropped off her youngest child at school, “waits for an epilogue”, and “that all the wanderings which have taken place be sanctioned”, declared to AFP their lawyer Mr. Philippe Vouland.
“They repeatedly reported suspicious noises, cracks. They demanded, they asked” and today they want “all those who did not do what they were supposed to do to be obviously sanctioned,” he said. he added.
Why were the buildings at 63 and 65 rue d'Aubagne, a few hundred meters from the Old Port, able to collapse on themselves in just a few seconds?
On the dock: several co-owners of 65, the only building still inhabited, their trustee, who remained deaf to the tenants' reports, and an expert, who carried out an assessment in barely an hour, without even taking the time to visit the cellar , two weeks before the tragedy. Following this visit, almost all of the tenants were authorized to return home.
– Manage emotion “day by day” –
But also an elected official, then deputy mayor, responsible for fighting against “degraded and unworthy housing”, whose services, totally disorganized, would have managed the numerous reports “with a lightness that raises questions”, in the words of the investigating magistrates, who qualify the tragedy as a “dramatic and paroxysmal reflection of an accumulation of dysfunctions”.
This former deputy, Julien Ruas, “is combative, very pained like all Marseillais, but straight in his boots. And he intends to demonstrate that he is totally innocent of the facts with which he is accused”, declared his lawyer, Me Erick Campana.
Initially, only four defendants were referred to court by the investigating judges. The co-owners were directly summoned to appear in court by civil parties, a legal point contested by certain lawyers and which began to be discussed on Thursday.
But for Me Brice Grazzini, lawyer for around thirty civil parties, “the judicial information was completely disinterested in the co-owners” and “with the families, it seemed totally impossible that they would not be present at this trial”, he told AFPTV.
This tragedy had deeply marred the end of the reign of Jean-Claude Gaudin (LR), mayor of the city for 25 years, who had blamed “the rain” and bad luck. Since then, a left-wing union, Le Printemps marseillais, has been elected at the head of the city.
“We await this trial with full hope. We know that it will not be easy, but we are very confident in justice”, so that “in the future there will never be again” such a tragedy, explained Maria Carpignano, the mother of Simona, who died at 30 years old.
There will also be emotion and “it will be managed day by day”, confides Linda Larbi, cousin of Chérif Zemar, one of the other deceased victims.
Especially since the victims' relatives and associations know: this trial will not mark the end of substandard housing in Marseille, where 100,000 people are still poorly housed.
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