The public prosecutor of Besançon announced this Thursday, January 12 that he was going to challenge the possibility of practicing medicine again granted to Dr Frédéric Péchier, anesthetist indicted for 24 poisonings of patients and suspected of 8 others.
“I will seize the investigating magistrate of an increase in judicial control”announced at a press conference Etienne Manteaux, believing that he was in his eyes “not a single moment possible” that Frédéric Péchier, certainly “presumed innocent” but put on trial, “be authorized to practice the profession of doctor”.
The elusive Doctor Péchier
The prosecutor was speaking the day after a decision by the investigating chamber of the Besançon Court of Appeal validating the possibility for Frédéric Péchier to work again as a doctor, excluding however his specialty, anesthesia. However, it is the council of the order of doctors who will ultimately say whether or not he can practice again.
A procedure that “is becoming very long”
According to Etienne Manteaux, this judgment delivered on Wednesday constitutes a “strict reading” and a clarification of “terms used by the judge of freedoms and detention” (JLD) which had left Frédéric Péchier free under judicial control by prohibiting him “to practice the profession of doctor-anaesthetist”.
A formulation that had since been heard by ” everyone “ as “a general ban on practicing the profession of doctor”in particular by the suspect and his advisers who had therefore seized the chamber of the instruction to be able to practice medicine again.
Besançon anesthesiologist suspected of 24 poisonings attempted suicide
According to Etienne Manteaux, one of the messages of the investigating chamber is also to ask “to judicial actors” that “this judicial investigation is coming to an end” : the instruction, started in 2017, “gets very long”.
Indicted for 24 poisonings
“It is very complex but it must (it) end and I can assure you that we are all well aware of it”insisted Etienne Manteaux, who evokes the objective of closing the judicial investigation “in the summer of 2023”.
Frédéric Péchier, 50, is suspected of having polluted the infusion bags of patients to cause cardiac arrest and then demonstrate his skills as a resuscitator, but also discredit colleagues with whom he was in conflict.
He is indicted for 24 cases of poisoning, including nine fatalities. Since September, he has also been suspected of eight new cases of potential poisoning of patients, including four fatalities. The practitioner has claimed his innocence since the start of the case.
