The former director of France's blood transfusion center was sentenced to four years in prison Friday for allowing AIDS-tainted blood to be given to hundreds of hemophiliacs. More than 250 of them have died of AIDS.
Dr. Michel Garretta, who is working in the United States, also was fined $100,000. He and a co-defendant, Jean-Pierre Allain, were ordered to pay $1.8 million in compensation to victims and their families.Garretta's lawyers plan to appeal but declined to say when Garretta might return to France. French TV quoted his wife as saying he would surrender promptly.
Garretta was the key defendant among four former health officials tried last summer in a criminal case that scandalized France. Two received lighter sentences Friday, and one was acquitted.
Relatives of hemophiliacs who got AIDS from the tainted blood were gathered at the courthouse Friday and reacted angrily to the judgment, shouting "Killer state!" to convey their view that government ministers, as well as the health officials, bore responsibility.
The radical AIDS activist group Act-Up staged a protest outside the court during the sentencing. Several dozen activists lay on the ground clutching posters streaked with red paint that denounced Socialist Party leader Laurent Fabius, France's premier when the tainted blood was used in 1985.
"There has been a vast cover-up," Act-Up said in a statement. "The politicians who clearly were shown to be responsible have yet to be charged."
Garretta was in the United States when the sentence was announced. Asked if and when his client would return, Garretta's laywer, Xavier Charvet, would say only: "You'll see."
The U.S. Embassy said he had been working in the United States for an American company under terms of a non-resident visa which he obtained before the trial started.
Garretta would be placed in custody on his return, and could apply for bail.
The trial was a sordid saga of doctors-turned-bureaucrats who put their annual budgets above patient care, shaking faith in France's cradle-to-grave health system.
The case against Garretta was brought on behalf of 1,200 hemophiliacs given blood transfusions by the National Center for Blood Transfusions in 1985 from stocks that officials knew were contaminated with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS.
More than 250 hemophiliacs have since died. Others testified in dramatic courtroom appearances during the six-week trial, describing how they and their families were coping with imminent death.
Garretta and Allain, the blood center's former research chief, were charged with "deception over the basic qualities of a product," which carries a four-year maximum penalty.
Jacques Roux, ex-director of health division of the Justice Ministry, and Robert Netter, former director of the National Health Laboratory, were charged with "non-assistance to a person in danger," which carries a maximum five-year penalty.
Allain received a four-year sentence, but with two years suspended. Roux received a four-year suspended sentence, and Netter was acquitted.
Prosecutors painted Garretta as a cold bully who refused to dispose of the center's blood stocks, worth $40 million, even though they were contaminated.
They said he also chose not to purchase an expensive U.S.-developed technology that could have neutralized the HIV virus by heating the blood, as well as another American-developed technique for testing blood for HIV. He and other French health officials instead waited for France's Pasteur Institute to develop its own system, evidence showed.
Garretta maintained that he was acting on orders from Cabinet ministers, none of whom were tried.