C’is a gripping book. Also frustrating sometimes, so much we want to know the outcome. But it is characteristic of this work devoted to unresolved disappearances: the portraits drawn up remain in suspense, without the authors being able to put an end to them. In Wanted poster, subtitled “Testimonies of families of the disappeared *”, Agnès Naudin, police captain in the territorial brigade for the protection of the family (currently on availability), and Bernard Valezy, divisional commissioner (forty years in the service of the national police) , underline the shortcomings in terms of worrying disappearances. “Did the investigators really do everything to find them? “, Ask the authors. Together, Agnès Naudin and Bernard Valezy went to meet the families of fifteen people who have disappeared in recent years. For example, Eric Foray, who went to buy bread on September 16, 2016, and that his companion will never see again. Or Valentin Mousset, who disappeared while he was trekking in India in 2013.
Each thematic chapter (the passage of time, neglected families, etc.) begins with an observation, followed by a series of portraits of the missing who often bear witness to major dysfunctions in terms of investigation, and ends with the authors’ conclusions. Drawing on their experience, they also offer solutions to make things happen. Bernard Valezy, vice-president of the Assistance and Search for Missing Persons (ARPD) association, had long felt the need to give voice to the families of the missing. He then contacted Agnès Naudin – already author of several books – so that they could lead this project together. “There is a will of all these families to be considered, that is the whole problem in these cases of disappearances”, insist the two police officers.
A few days before the trial of Nordahl Lelandais for the murder of Corporal Arthur Noyer – which is due to open on May 3 before the Assize Court of Savoy – this book has a very special resonance. Some of the missing persons – Lucie Roux, Malik Boutvillain, Adrien Fiorello, among others – could, in fact, have crossed paths with the one who also admitted to having killed little Maëlys in August 2017. So many cases on which the forces of the order have recently leaned again …
Point : The name of Nordahl Lelandais comes up repeatedly in your book. He is mentioned in at least seven portraits of the missing, with each time the mention: “A link with Nordahl Lelandais? “…
Bernard Valezy: Nordahl Lelandais could, in fact, be involved in several cases that we deal with in the book. This is an issue that I know well as regional president of the ARPD in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, where he comes from and where he lived. When he confessed to being responsible for the death of Arthur Noyer, many families in the region affected by worrying disappearances wondered if there could not be a connection to be made between Lelandais’ activity and these disappearances. Twenty-three families came to the association to ask what should be done in order to launch investigations into possible links with Lelandais. It was at this time that the Ariane cell was created by the central criminal intelligence service of the national gendarmerie.
What was the role of the Ariane cell?
B. V. : This team of six or seven gendarmes had for mission, on the one hand, to reconstitute the course of life of Lelandais since February 2001 (date of his majority) until August 2017 and, on the other hand, to make possible connections with cases of homicides or unsolved disappearances that took place in an area and at a time when the presence of the alleged murderer of Maëlys and of Corporal Noyer was possible. We forwarded the information in the possession of the ARPD to the Ariane cell.
Agnes Naudin: Nine hundred cases were examined by the cell. At the end of a first phase, three hundred of them were excluded, because, at the time of the facts, Lelandais was not in the region concerned, or rather his phone did not limit to that place.
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B. V. : After a second phase, the Ariane unit selected around forty cases which deserved further study, which could “match” with Lelandais. At the end of this work, fourteen priority cases were retained (thirteen disappearances and one suspicious death). In the book are also cited several of the cases retained as priority. The Ariane cell, on the other hand, did not work on these cases. Once the centralizing work had been carried out, it forwarded the files to the competent police or gendarmerie services, so that they could carry out the necessary investigations. This Ariane unit therefore no longer exists as such today, but a permanent “cold case” service has been created to take over and perform reconciliations on unsolved cases.
What do you think are the most serious failings in the investigation of disappearances?
A. N. : I think that what is very problematic today, and that we find in each of the cases, is a form of I-don’t care, which affects both the investigation services and the justice services. The people we have been able to meet, I call them “forgotten by justice”. They are often people with whom we have nothing to do, either because they are not known, because they have no money or their name is Mohamed … We are both, with Bernard, from the police and we have some experience in the field which allows us to say that there is too often a lack of consideration towards the relatives of missing persons. If each police officer at the reception of a police station or each gendarme at the reception of a brigade took more time to listen to what people have to say, this would avoid a sentence that we hear almost every time and which is to say, “Come back in 48 hours.” A sort of custom that does not appear anywhere in the law. One of the solutions – which was not spelled out clearly in the book because it relates much more to people than to technique – is to say that if each police officer or each gendarme took the time to listen to people, that would avoid a chain of disastrous situations.
You should know that there is a reminder in the police that explicitly says that the first 48 hours are crucial.Bernard Valezy
B. V. : Already, when we talk about disappearances, we have to set the scene. Today, in France, according to the latest figures for 2019, there are 68,000 disappearances per year. 140 minors and 50 adults disappear every day. It is therefore not an insignificant phenomenon, even if, among the 50,000 minors who disappear, it is mainly a matter of runaways. Regarding the 18,000 adults who evaporate each year, each time these are known as “worrying” disappearances. These disappearances often involve heavy research resources. On the issue of failures, if all does not go badly, there is a significant number of families who do not receive the welcome or the follow-up they could expect, this is what I call the “Stations of the Cross”. From the family of the deceased. The first difficulty, as Agnès said, is to report the disappearance. You should know that there is a reminder in the police that explicitly says that the first 48 hours are crucial. The other problem is the recognition of the worrying nature of the disappearance, essential for the police to launch an investigation and commit resources. When it comes to minors, however, it is automatically worrying.
Even if an investigation were to be opened for a worrying disappearance, there is still a long way to go …
B. V. : Once the investigation is open, certain acts must be carried out immediately and we too often realize that certain things are badly done, such as the lack of examination of the telephone boundaries, the use of video surveillance of the public highway or ‘neighborhood survey… But the most problematic remains the lack of information communicated to families, who sometimes feel excluded from surveys that are often quickly closed.
At what point can we estimate a “worrying” disappearance?
B. V. : It is not so much from when, but rather a matter of circumstances. This is why it is very complicated to distinguish between worrying disappearances and voluntary disappearances.
A. N. : It’s all the harder since the RIF disappeared [la « recherche dans l’intérêt des familles » était une procédure administrative grâce à laquelle une personne signalait être sans nouvelle d’une personne majeure et souhaitait la retrouver dans son intérêt propre. L’enquêteur ne pouvait pas communiquer les nouvelles coordonnées de la personne disparue sans son accord. Une procédure abrogée en 2013, NDLR]. The RIF had the advantage of taking into account voluntary disappearances, so we had a broader vision of the phenomenon.
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Among the cases that you expose in the book, have some particularly marked you?
A. N. : The one that marked me a lot was that of Mohamed Abdelhadi *. This case is, in my eyes, the symbol of everything that can go wrong in an investigation, from start to finish: poor family care, I-don’t care and inaction by investigation services, which conduct, in fine, to a denial of justice.
B. V. : I would cite, for my part, a particularly significant case of misfires that can take place when a procedure is launched: it is the Lucie Roux affair, which takes place in Chambéry. In this case, the minimum of what needed to be done was not done. We think in particular of the phone of the disappeared who, after eight years, has still not been recovered by investigators. We therefore closed an investigation without doing the basic checks. There is in addition, in this case, testimonies of people gathered by the lawyer saying that she was likely to have lunched with someone who looked like Nordahl Lelandais in the hospital where she was interned and where he was. follow-up for depression and alcoholism problems. Lucie Roux’s mother, completely abandoned by the investigators, had to conduct a real counter-investigation on her own. [Le dossier de Lucie Roux, disparue en 2012, avait été rouvert à la lumière de l’affaire Lelandais. Le parquet de Chambéry a finalement classé l’affaire sans suite en novembre 2019, NDLR].
*Mohamed Abdelhadi, a young man of 27, disappeared on December 9, 2001 in the Rhône. The disappearance, at the time, had hardly mobilized the police. His family had in vain multiplied the research. In 2008, she filed a complaint for “disturbing disappearance”. It was not until March 2015 that a woman denounced her companion who allegedly confessed to her having stabbed to death, with his father, a young man whose body they had hidden in a cellar before burying him in a wood. In September 2016, the body of Mohamed Abdelhadi was found. The father and his two sons were indicted for murder and complicity, and the father, who admitted the facts, imprisoned. The main suspect will not be tried, however, the justice having misplaced the complaint filed for worrying disappearance.
” Wanted poster. Testimonies from families of the missing ”, by Agnès Naudin and Bernard Valezy (Éditions Massot, 288 p., € 19.90). In bookstores on May 6.
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