François Bayrou continues to be entangled in the Betharram case. The Prime Minister declared, Tuesday, February 18, before the National Assembly not “never” intervened, “neither near nor far”, with investigators or justice about violence within the Catholic establishment from Béarn.
The Prime Minister also said that in 1998, the Attorney General had “kept informed” the Ministry of Justice, whose holder was Elisabeth Guigou during the government of the socialist Lionel Jospin during the government. And he deemed unimaginable that the Minister of National Education Claude Allègre and the Minister of School Education Ségolène Royal were not “warned” of “such important report”.
“If I didn’t know, others knew”
The Head of Government, Minister of Education until 1997, is accused, in particular by the deputy of rebellious France Paul Vannier, of having lied to the National Assembly by assuring that he “was not aware “Accusations of sexual violence within the establishment, where several of his children were educated.
In a testimony broadcast on Sunday in the magazine “Sept à eight”, on TF1, the gendarme in charge of the investigation into Father Carricart, former director of the institution accused of rape in 1998, spoke of a “intervention” of François Bayrou with justice at the time when he was a deputy and president of the General Council. He reiterates these remarks Tuesday in the newspaper La République des Pyrénées. The judge who was investigating rape in 1998 also reported in several media that François Bayrou had “made the step to come” to see him when the priest was in detention.
This investigating judge, Christian Mirande, “it’s my neighbor for 50 years,” replied the mayor of Pau on Tuesday during a question of the socialist deputy of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques Colette Capdevielle. “Were we able to speak with judge Christian Mirande of this affair? No doubt yes”, but a magistrate “does not have the right to communicate the slightest element of the file for which he is responsible for some person outside the outside file that it is, “he insisted. “We were able to talk about the atmosphere, we were able to talk about the establishment, never the file,” added François Bayrou.
As for the Attorney General, “I do not know him, and” he had no communication “with” anyone on this file “, he also assured.” But if I did not know, D Others knew. Because I affirm before you and you will check it, that the Attorney General held him informed the chancellery on these cases four times in the year 1998. He did it telephone on the day of the imprisonment and he Then did three times in writing, signaling the gravity of the facts, “said the Prime Minister.