Bodies exhumed and found in pieces in the scrubland instead of being cremated… This Tuesday, the Bastia prosecutor’s office asked for six months of suspended imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 euros against a funeral director, for “attack on the integrity of the corpses”. “The case is particularly serious, with an attack on the respect due to the dead,” insisted the prosecutor.
The case began in April, with the discovery of seven coffins and human bones hidden in garbage bags, in the middle of a wild dump under a steep road in the village of Bigorno (Haute-Corse). Investigations by the gendarmerie then made the connection between the bones and an exhumation request made to a funeral director for a family vault in a nearby village, in order to proceed with a cremation.
I have not seen the bones in the coffins
Eight months later, the manager of the company thus appeared before the criminal court of Bastia, supported by one of his subcontractors, against the two accused of responsibility for the facts. “Who filled the garbage bags? Who was aware of the content? Who knows what they would become? The versions differ. And they did everything with the mission entrusted to them”, the prosecutor launched at the hearing. Against the executive, he asked for six months’ imprisonment with suspended sentence, a fine of 5,000 euros and disqualification from exercising a profession linked to funeral homes, for “injury to the integrity of a corpse” and “abuse of trust”. For the subcontractor he asked for a fine of 5,000 euros for violating the integrity of a corpse.
Before the magistrates, the undertaker, already sentenced to six months of suspended prison for extortion with threat or coercion and one year of suspended prison for breach of trust, asserted his good faith. “I have not seen the bones in the coffins. (…) I still wonder how this is possible. For me the coffin was empty,” he said on the witness stand. The other defendant, a professional security officer with a clean criminal record, has no more explanations for the presence of the bones, some of which, however, are thirty centimeters long. Officially employed that day for masonry work, he assured that he had taken the garbage bags without knowing that there were bodies inside: “I threw everything in the bush knowing it was not illegal,” he said.
Defense attorneys have asked for his release. The decision was reserved for January 10.
