University boss charged over rotting corpses

AFP 13 June 2021

The former president of a French university has been charged following shock revelations over the putrid conditions in which thousands of corpses donated to the faculty for research were kept, reports AFP.

Frederic Dardel has been charged with desecrating a corpse, a source close to the investigation told AFP, asking not to be named. His lawyer confirmed he had been charged on Friday 4 June, after being questioned over the scandal that forced the closure of the Centre for Body Donations at Paris-Descartes University, founded in 1953.

In 2019, the government shut down the centre, heralded as a “temple of anatomy” for over half a century, after reports that bodies were left to rot, be gnawed by mice or even sold. L’Express news magazine in November 2019 broke the story of what it described as a “mass grave in the heart of Paris”. The report described “bodies by the dozen in an indescribable jumble. Here, a decomposing leg dangles. There, another damaged, blackened and riddled with holes after being nibbled by mice.”
Full report on The Local France site

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