Scheduled for October in Paris, the trial for the manslaughter of the Spanish company Swiftair for the crash of the Air Algérie plane in 2014 in the Sahel is suspended, the court having transmitted preliminary questions to European justice on Tuesday.
The Spanish company, an owner of the plane which crashed killing 116 people, was due to go on trial from October 2-26, but a preliminary hearing was held on June 8 to consider a procedural issue raised by Swiftair.
The company received a dismissal following an investigation in Spain, and the court must decide whether this can hinder the trial in France.
The question is whether the principle of “ne bis in idem”, according to which no one can be prosecuted or punished twice for the same facts, can apply in this case.
After deliberating, the court on Tuesday transmitted four questions for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the interpretation of European law in the matter. The proceedings – and therefore the trial – are suspended until the Court rules.
Air Algérie flight AH5017 crashed on July 24, 2014 in the middle of the Sahel, in northern Mali. In the accident of this plane which was on an Ouagadougou-Algiers flight, 110 passengers died – including 54 French, 23 Burkinabés, Lebanese, and Algerians – and six crew members, all Spaniards.
Swiftair was the owner of the aircraft which it had leased, together with the crew, from Air Algérie.
At the end of the investigations, the French investigating judges had estimated that “various shortcomings on the part of the company” had played a role in the accident, in particular, a “lacunary training” of the crew which had not “not allowed” to “react appropriately and avoid the accident”.
On the contrary, the company argues that the accident resulted from a combination of external factors.
“The CJEU will finally be seized of this essential question of the application of the ne bis in idem principle, for two instructions between two States of the European Union. Swiftair, which had benefited from a dismissal in Spain, the demanded since 2017,” said Me Rachel Lindon, the company’s lawyer.
“I wonder between this same prosecution which requires the release in Rio-Paris, which requires the referral of preliminary questions to the CJEU”, reacted Me Sébastien Busy, the lawyer for the associations AH5017-Ensemble and Fenvac. “Are we looking for the end of justice in terms of collective accidents?”, he added, describing “puzzled” families.
