Deadly explosion trial begins

A COURT case over an explosion at a Toulouse factory that killed 30 people, injured 20,000 and damaged tens of thousands of buildings will open this afternoon.

The explosion at the Total-owned AZF factory, France’s deadliest industrial accident since the Second World War, registered 3.4 on the Richter scale and damaged buildings, including a school where one pupil died, several kilometres away.

The case is expected to take at least four months, with more than 1,000 witnesses involved.

Factory director Serge Biechlin and building owners Grande Paroisse – a subsidiary of Total - are charged with involuntary homicide, destruction and damage and breaching the Code de travail.

Total has already paid out at least €2 billion in compensation in more than 80,000 cases but the company denies this is an admission of culpability.

Victims groups have criticised the level payouts to people some of whom were left disabled and with hearing problems.

Around 10% of the city’s population were temporarily evacuated from their homes following the explosion.

It was caused by 300 tonnes of fertiliser which exploded leaving a crater 10m deep and 50m across. Wreckage from the factory was found 3km away.

The blast produced a cloud of gas and chemicals over Toulouse where many initially believed it was a terrorist attack just ten days after the events of September 11 in New York.

According to the prosecution, the explosion was a result of poor management and negligence on the part of directors at the company.

Both the director and Total deny the charges and claim that it is impossible that such an explosive chemical mixture could have been produced in the factory.

The trial will be the third to be filmed in France since a 1985 law on recording historic procedures was passed. Total’s appeal against this procedure failed and defence lawyer Daniel Soulez-Larivière told Le Figaro newspaper that it was a problem that they were “basing the trial on a law set up for war criminals”.

Previous trials filmed in this way include Klaus Barbie (an SS officer known at ‘The Butcher of Lyon’) Paul Touvier (convicted of collaborating and human rights violations in 1994) and Maurice Papon (a former French minister convicted in1998 for his role in the deportation of Jews from France).

Photo: Afp/Eric Cabanis