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Victims Demand Justice After French HIV-Tainted Blood Case Thrown Out
PARIS,
July 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Victims' rights groups
urged state prosecutors Friday, July 5, to appeal a surprise dismissal
of the case against 30 doctors and government officials implicated in
using HIV-tainted blood products in France in the mid-1980s, news
agencies reported.
Following Thursday's shock
decision by a Paris court, the French Association of Hemophiliacs
(AFH) demanded that "a public trial, whatever the outcome, can
one day take place."
"This matter, which
beyond the emotional drama poses questions about ethics and the
responsibility of public officials in our society, should be reviewed
from scratch," the group said in a statement, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) said.
Nearly 4,000 people, 1,300 of
them hemophiliacs, contracted HIV or full-blown AIDS from contaminated
blood they received in transfusions in the mid-1980s. Hundreds have
since died.
On Thursday, a Paris court
threw out the case against 30 doctors and government officials placed
under investigation in connection with the scandal.
State prosecutors have five
days to appeal the decision of the court, which did not immediately
release the full ruling outlining the legal grounds for dismissing the
case, AFP said.
Relatives of the victims
decried the ruling, which if upheld could bring an end to more than 10
years of legal proceedings linked to the case.
"It's a denial of
justice," AFH president Edmond-Luc Henry told Le Figaro newspaper
in an interview published Friday.
"The victims know the
decision but not the reasoning behind it. It's another sign of
contempt directed at them," he added.
Henry said at least 600
hemophiliacs had already died from AIDS-related illnesses after
receiving tainted transfusions.
French Justice Minister
Dominique Perben empathized with victims' families, saying he
understood their "extreme disappointment" with the ruling,
and the fact that the reasons behind it were not released.
"The court must make an
effort to explain its decisions, to make itself understood, and allow
the public to read its decisions," Perben told French radio.
Perben said he would consult
with prosecutors as to whether to launch an appeal.
The country's left-leaning
Liberation sharply criticized the decision, proclaiming it "pure
inhumanity."
"Without a doubt, nothing
is worse in legal matters than the contempt of judges for complainants
who have multiple reasons to consider themselves victims," the
paper said in a commentary.
Several senior civil servants,
including the head of the country's blood transfusion service, were
jailed or fined in 1993 for knowingly allowing tainted blood products
to be used in transfusions.
French courts found that the
government failed to introduce blood screening tests produced in the
United States in order to favor a rival test by the country's Pasteur
institute that was in development and unreliable, AFP said.
In 1999, former Socialist
prime minister Laurent Fabius and former social affairs minister
Georgina Dufoix were cleared of being accessories to poisoning.
Former health minister Edmond
Herve was convicted of negligence for his role in the scandal, but was
not given a punishment.
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