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CRIME

French housing authority charged with manslaughter after building collapse that killed eight

French prosecutors said on Wednesday that the public housing agency for the southern port city of Marseille has been charged with manslaughter over the collapse of two apartment buildings two years ago that left eight people dead.

Published: 4 November 2020 13:23 CET
French housing authority charged with manslaughter after building collapse that killed eight
Photo: AFP

The disaster sparked an outpouring of fury from residents, who accused city officials of long ignoring their complaints about unsafe and unsanitary housing.

Marseille's public prosecutor Dominique Laurens said the housing agency was charged with “involuntary manslaughter through a deliberate violation of security obligations”.

The Mediterranean city's semi-public housing development company was hit with the lesser charges of involuntary injuries and endangering people's lives. Under French law, the filing of charges does not necessarily lead to a trial.

Huge cracks had appeared in one of the buildings before it suddenly crumbled on November 5th, 2018, in Noailles, a working-class district of the city.

The other building had been condemned and boarded up because of safety risks, and the disaster also prompted the partial collapse of a third building, forcing officials to evacuate dozens of people.

The disaster spurred emergency inspections of dilapidated public housing blocks across Marseille, although city officials rejected any responsibility for the collapse.

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CRIME

French police summon Gérard Depardieu over suspected sexual assault

French police summoned cinema legend Gérard Depardieu on Monday over suspected incidents of sexual assault with a view towards placing him in custody for questioning, a police source said.

Published: 29 April 2024 11:23 CEST
French police summon Gérard Depardieu over suspected sexual assault

Police were to question the actor over two women’s allegations that he assaulted them – one on a film set in 2014 and the other on another shoot in 2021, the source said, confirming a report by the BFMTV television channel.

The first woman accuses him of having assaulted her when she was a member of the crew on the 2022 feature film “The Green Shutters”.

The set designer, who filed a formal complaint in February, told investigative website Mediapart that Depardieu grabbed her as she left the set in a private hotel in Paris, groping her and making obscene comments, before his bodyguards removed him.

The second woman has alleged he groped her “all over” and made “inappropriate” remarks while she was an assistant on the set of 2015 film “Le magician et le Siamois” (“The Magician and the Siamese”), she told regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest.

Depardieu already faces a rape charge, as well as claims of assault by more than a dozen women – all of which he has strongly denied.

“Never ever have I abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in Le Figaro newspaper in October.

Police in 2020 charged Depardieu with rape and sexual assault after actor Charlotte Arnould alleged he raped her in 2018 when she was 22.

Another sexual assault complaint filed last year by actor Hélène Darras, who said Depardieu groped and propositioned her during a 2007 film shoot, has been dropped for being past the statute of limitations.

Spanish journalist and author Ruth Baza said in December she had filed a criminal complaint in Spain against Depardieu, claiming he raped her in 1995 in Paris.

Despite the events having passed the statute of limitations, she said she decided to file her complaint hoping it would “help other people” to do the same.

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