{"id":45972,"date":"2026-04-08T16:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/45972\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T16:56:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T16:56:16","slug":"suspect-remains-silent-in-swiss-bar-fire-probe-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/45972\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspect remains silent in Swiss bar fire probe | National"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

“My client exercised his right to remain silent as he does not yet have access to the case file,” lawyer Fabien Mingard told AFP.<\/p>\n

“He will answer the public prosecutors’ questions as soon as he has access to the file.”<\/p>\n

The former head of the Crans-Montana municipality’s fire safety department has not been named by Swiss media.<\/p>\n

“The hearing lasted only 15-20 minutes because the defendant refused to cooperate after being informed of the charges,” Robert Assael, one of the lawyers for the civil parties in the case, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“I am shocked that he did not answer the questions when the victims… are only waiting for one thing: the truth,” 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 — most of them teenagers — 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’s 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

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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 “surprised” by the former fire safety official remaining silent, while noting that “it is his right” to do so.<\/p>\n

“The Morettis… 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,” Meier told AFP.<\/p>\n

Crans-Montana is in Switzerland’s 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’s 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":"A former fire safety official in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana remained silent when questioned Wednesday by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[1380,1655,3277,10322,10321,13509,41,17],"class_list":["post-45972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-afp","tag-crime","tag-crimes","tag-criminal-justice","tag-criminal-law","tag-man-made-disasters","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116370144457995639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45972","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=45972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}