translated from Spanish: An anesthesiologist is accused in France of dozens of poisonings

A doctor anaesthetist was accused on Thursday in France of “Seventeen poisonings of vulnerable people”, which join seven others for which it was already investigated, one of his lawyers announced. Frédéric Péchier, aged 47, is now suspected of having committed a total of 24 poisonings, nine of them deadly. On Thursday, he was presented to two investigating judges after his pre-trial detention in Besançon (east). On Friday morning, he was released under court control, his lawyers said. A judicial control was decreed, as was being given for two years. We consider it to be a good decision, “the press told one of his lawyers, Jean-Yves Le Borgne, quoted in the BFMTV chain.

Dr. Péchier was placed in custody on Tuesday morning as part of a preliminary investigation, opened by the Besançon prosecutor’s office in 2017, when he was charged with seven suspected poisonings, two of them deadly. ” 17 cases have been retained “cardiac arrests occurring during surgical interventions to patients between 4 and 80 years, of which” Seven did not survive, “the Prosecutor of the Republic, Étienne Manteaux, explained on Thursday during a press conference.

Péchier is “the common denominator” of the “serious adverse reactions” detected by the medical body between 2008 and 2016, the prosecutor said. These reactions, he added, were enrolled “in a context of acute conflict with his fellow anaesthetists or surgeons at the Saint-Vincent clinic” in the same city. The prosecutor’s Office retained 17 of the 66 cases identified during this period, he said. Cardiac arrests were the result of the administration of potentially lethal doses of potassium and anesthetics, according to the investigation. The investigators suspect that Péchier deliberately modified the peer anesthesia bags to cause incidents in operations and demonstrate their talents in resuscitation. The prosecutor revealed that Frédéric Péchier admitted during his pre-trial detention that “there were criminal acts, poisonings, at the Saint-Vincent clinic”, but he refused to be the author.



Original source in Spanish