Controversies, in 2000, around the disappearance of La Minerve after the Kursk drama in Russia
Since 1968, the position of SIRPA, the armed forces' information service, has remained the same. Since the wreck of the Minerve has not been found, nothing can be communicated about it. This position seems paradoxical, even contradictory, given the existence of a "confidential defense" file , which raises the question of what it could contain that merited secrecy.
This silence on the conclusions of the commission of inquiry would open the way to a controversy starting in 2000 during the Kursk tragedy.
A site dedicated to the Minerva on the Internet
Before this Russian drama around 1998, the site of Jean-Alain Autret,the tragedy of Minerva, had begun to pull the Minerva and the Eurydice out of the semi-oblivion that slowly covered them.
Jean-Alain's father, René Autret had been marin on the Minerve when it was launched and, even if he had not lost any_cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_comrade, was bruised by this tragedy.
Repeated attacks by Turkish hackers will eventually lead Jean-Alain Autret to freeze his site and cease all animation.
The Kursk tragedy and the Minerva controversy
In August 2000 the Russians lost their submarine Koursk in particularly dramatic conditions(details onWikipedia).
The 26/08/2000an article in Le Monde, by journalist Jacques Isnard, opens a controversy around the disappearance of the Minerve and Euridyce submarines.
(Read the article HERE)
The army would have deliberately concealed the causes of the accidents of the Minerve and the Eurydice deliberately to protect the commercial interests of the DAPHNE submarines which had known a certain success in the 'export.
This article causes an uproar among submariners. VAE Hubert Foillard responds in an article published in "La Baille"(?), but whose audience is limited. (Read the article HERE)
In the process, "La Croix" explicitly echoes this article to take up its arguments. (Read the article HERE)
On October 23, in turn, Liberation, without mentioning the other two newspapers, published an article in the same vein, "fatal immersion" which is based, on the one hand, on the description of the drama made in the sitethe tragedy of Minerva (from the "Revue Maritime de 1968" quoted above), on the other hand takes up Le Monde's position on the Minerve accident. (Read the article HERE)
Curiosity then began to grow around ce "confidential defense" file, the existence of which few people knew or suspected outside the army.
Thus, since 2000 the controversy has continued to swell, it is taken up and relaunched by most of the media each time the drama of La Minerve is mentioned.
Several visits to the Vincennes archives by family members of the disappeared then came up against an end of inadmissibility. (seetestimonials)
Some will manage, individually, to have access to it thanks to the understanding of those in charge of the archives. But this remains the exception.
The resentment of the families has continued to mount since, the official position around Secret Defense proving less and less understandable.