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\n Published on
\n 08\/04\/2026 – 18:17 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
A former fire safety official in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana remained silent when questioned by prosecutors on Wednesday investigating a deadly New Year bar fire, his lawyer said.<\/p>\n
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“My client exercised his right to remain silent as he does not yet have access to the case file,” lawyer Fabien Mingard told the AFP news agency.<\/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, said.<\/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 1 January 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
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 6 January when it revealed that no annual safety check had been carried out at the bar since 2019.<\/p>\n
Crans-Montana Mayor Nicolas F\u00e9raud is due to face questioning in the coming days.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 08\/04\/2026 – 18:17 GMT+2 A former fire safety official in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2036,5710,12533,26648,72,41,17],"class_list":["post-45982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-fire","tag-investigation","tag-new-year","tag-new-year-celebrations","tag-police","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116370215144882364","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45982","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=45982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}