Candles and flowers left by Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana – Copyright POOL\/AFP Tom Nicholson<\/p>\n
A former fire safety official in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana remained silent when questioned Wednesday by prosecutors investigating a deadly New Year blaze, his lawyer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy client exercised his right to remain silent as he does not yet have access to the case file,\u201d lawyer Fabien Mingard told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe will answer the public prosecutors\u2019 questions as soon as he has access to the file.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former head of the Crans-Montana municipality\u2019s fire safety department has not been named by Swiss media.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hearing lasted only 15-20 minutes because the defendant refused to cooperate after being informed of the charges,\u201d Robert Assael, one of the lawyers for the civil parties in the case, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am shocked that he did not answer the questions when the victims\u2026 are only waiting for one thing: the truth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The blaze at Le Constellation, a bar in the upmarket Alpine resort, broke out in the early hours of January 1 as people celebrated the New Year.<\/p>\n
A total of 41 people \u2014 most of them teenagers \u2014 were killed and another 115 were injured in the disaster.<\/p>\n
Nine people are under criminal investigation in the case.<\/p>\n
They include the bar\u2019s French owners, husband and wife Jacques and Jessica Moretti, who face charges of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence.<\/p>\n
They have twice been questioned at length by public prosecutors and lawyers for the civil parties.<\/p>\n
Nicola Meier, a lawyer for the Morettis, said he was \u201csurprised\u201d by the former fire safety official remaining silent, while noting that \u201cit is his right\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Morettis\u2026 have never refused to answer a single question. They have always been fully cooperative, and that remains the case today and will continue to be,\u201d Meier told AFP.<\/p>\n
Crans-Montana is in Switzerland\u2019s southwestern Wallis canton and the hearings are taking place in the cantonal capital Sion.<\/p>\n
Jacques Moretti was due to be questioned again on Tuesday but the hearing was postponed indefinitely on medical grounds.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors believe the fire started when champagne bottles with sparklers attached were raised too close to the ceiling in the bar\u2019s basement level, igniting the sound insulation foam.<\/p>\n
The municipality triggered outrage on January 6 when it revealed that no annual safety check had been carried out at the bar since 2019.<\/p>\n
Crans-Montana Mayor Nicolas Feraud is due to face questioning in the coming days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Candles and flowers left by Le Constellation bar in Crans-Montana – Copyright POOL\/AFP Tom Nicholson A former fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2036,16411,5710,41,17],"class_list":["post-45930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-fire","tag-hide","tag-investigation","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116369935766581965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}