Verdict in French AIDS Trial Leaves Many Outraged

The controversial trial of three former government officials charged with manslaughter for allegedly having worried more about French business interests than the dangers of AIDS ended in a compromise verdict Tuesday that outraged people with the disease and satisfied few others.

A special court found former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and two members of his 1984-86 Socialist government not guilty of delaying mandatory HIV tests for blood donors so a French pharmaceutical firm could perfect a rival to a U.S.-made product.

All three had been charged in the deaths of five people given untested blood or blood products carrying HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. If convicted, Fabius and his co-defendants could have been sentenced to five years in prison.

However, the Court of Justice of the Republic, a tribunal composed of three judges and a dozen members of Parliament, did find former Health Secretary Edmond Herve guilty of failing to order the destruction of unsterilized blood and blood-product stocks collected before testing was made mandatory in 1985 and of failing to organize checkups of people who had received transfusions.

The court said the inaction of Herve, the lowest-ranking of the defendants, had contributed to the death of one person and led to the infection of another.

But the court chose not to impose a sentence, saying that 15 years have elapsed and that the emotions aroused by the case are so intense that Herve hasn’t benefited from the “presumption of innocence” that French law requires.

Herve, 56, now mayor of Rennes in Brittany, denounced the verdict as “unjust,” attributing it to the “partisan politics” of right-wing lawmakers who outnumbered his fellow Socialists on the tribunal. Herve’s allies, including Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande, said he had been made a scapegoat.

As for victims and relatives whose loved ones died or became ill from tainted blood or blood products, they reacted with anger and dismay. Sylvie Rouy, 35 and now wheelchair-bound, contracted the disease in 1985 from tainted blood collected before testing became mandatory. Tuesday’s verdict brought her to the verge of tears.

“This is a small satisfaction, because I’m sure Herve is guilty of my contamination,” Rouy said, her voice quavering. “But he was not the only one, and I have realized that politicians are like gangsters: If you don’t catch them with their hand in the cookie jar, well, you never can get them. And this is again proof that’s true.”

The trial was the first since World War II in which French government ministers were made to face criminal charges for their actions in office. It was also the first case heard by the Court of Justice of the Republic, created six years ago.

Studies have found that, in the 1980s, about 4,000 people in France contracted the AIDS virus through unsterilized blood products. Six hundred have since died. Investigators found that 350 lives could have been saved if the Fabius government had acted more quickly to require testing of blood donors.

But the court, in its judgment, found that Fabius, 52, had acted “to accelerate the decision-making processes.” The former prime minister, now speaker of the National Assembly, said he felt “moved” and vindicated by the verdict.

Also acquitted was Georgina Dufoix, 56, social affairs minister in the Fabius government.