Controversies, in 2000, around the disappearance of La Minerve after the Kursk drama in Russia
This intractable silence on the part of the Navy paved the way for a controversy that began in 2000 with the Kursk tragedy.
The Western press raged against the Russian authorities, but in France this tragedy drew attention to the history of the Minerve and a controversy erupted over the Navy's silence.
A site dedicated to the Minerva on the Internet
Before this Russian tragedy, around 1998, the website of the son of a former member of La Minerve, Jean-Alain AUTRET, had helped to bring La Minerve and L'Eurydice out of the semi-oblivion that was slowly covering them.
Jean-Alain's father had been a sailor on the Minerve when it was launched and, although he had not lost any comrades, he was still devastated by the tragedy.
Repeated attacks by Turkish hackers eventually led him to close so site.
The Kursk tragedy and the Minerva controversy
In August 2000 the Russians lost their submarine Koursk in particularly dramatic conditions(details onWikipedia).
This Russian submarine sank at shallow depth near the Russian port of Murmansk in 2000. The Russian authorities refused any Western assistance that might have saved some of the sailors trapped in the wreck after the accident. All the survivors of the sinking died after several days trapped in the wreck.
The 26/08/2000 an 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.