The families of the victims continue to hope for the answer to the cause of the Ajaccio-Nice plane crash in 1968, which left 95 dead. The Nice prosecutor's office said it was in favor this Friday of a recovery or photographing operation of the device, submerged off the coast of Antibes.
“The civil parties' request for an act seems relevant and useful to me in revealing the truth.“, explained to AFP the public prosecutor Damien Martinelli, who judges “timely“to study beforehand”the conditions of feasibility of these photography and/or engine recovery operations“.
It is now up to the investigating judge, seized in the context of information for concealment, destruction and subtraction of evidence, and concealment of these offenses, to order or not the implementation of this study.
“Several serious elements, in particular testimonies but also material elements, tend to show that civil and/or military authorities may have sought to obstruct the determination of the causes and real circumstances of the Caravelle crash.“, estimates Damien Martinelli.
An announcement to which Me Paul Sollacaro, one of the three lawyers of the association of victims' families, rejoiced: “We are full of optimism, we feel that there is a favorable momentum from justice for the truth to come to light and that it will give itself the means to do so.“. “We hope that on a political level, this will result in the thesis supported by all the victims' families, that of an accidental missile fire, being finally recognized by the State.“, added the lawyer, indicating that he had been received at the Élysée, with one of his colleagues, by Emmanuel Macron's special advisor, Patrick Strzoda, and having received from him “insurance“that the means would be put at the service of justice for this operation.
On September 11, 1968, the Caravelle AF 1611, which was to connect Ajaccio to Nice in 45 minutes, suddenly crashed off the coast of Antibes, killing 95 people. The wreck was then located at a depth of around 2,000 meters.
A first investigation into manslaughter ended in 1973 with a dismissal of the case, the theory retained being that of a fire in the toilet cubicle. The investigation was relaunched in 2012 to “subtraction and concealment of evidence“and the investigating judge had requested in 2018 a lifting of defense secrecy, considering that it was necessary to take”very seriously“the hypothesis of an accidental missile launch from the Levant base near Hyères.
In response, documents were submitted to the courts by the Ministry of the Armed Forces in July 2019. They were judged “very unsatisfactory” by the lawyer of the victims' families.
