Former French health minister Agnès Buzyn has been put under formal investigation on Friday over her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, after investigators at a special court in Paris concluded there were grounds to prosecute her, reports FRANCE 24.
Buzyn has been charged* with "endangering the lives of others", the prosecutor of the Republic's Court of Justice said, but not for a second possible offence of "failure to stop a disaster".
The former doctor, who will be able to appeal the charge, attended a hearing at the court on Friday, saying she welcomed "an excellent opportunity for me to explain myself and to establish the truth."
She said she would not "let the action of the government be discredited, or my action as a minister, when we did so much to prepare our country for a global health crisis that is still ongoing."
The charges are a blow for President Emmanuel Macron, whose handling of the health crisis will face scrutiny during election campaigning next year, but the court is also likely to face allegations of judicial overreach.
The development marks one of first cases worldwide where a leading public official has been held legally accountable for the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Buzyn, health minister from May 2017 to February 2020, had to step down in February 2020, weeks after the first Covid cases were confirmed in France, under pressure from President Emmanuel Macron to replace Benjamin Griveaux, the LREM party candidate for mayor of Paris who was forced to withdraw after a sex scandal.
Buzyn has faced criticism and ridicule over her initial statements about the pandemic.
She said initially in January 2020 that there was "practically no risk" of importing Covid-19 from the Chinese city at the origin of the outbreak, Wuhan, and then said the "risk of a spread of the coronavirus among the population is very small".
A month later, as she left the ministry to launch a failed bid to become Paris mayor, she claimed that "the tsunami has yet to come", in an apparent contradiction of her earlier statements.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.
* Editor's note: Under a change to the French legal system introduced in 1993, a magistrate can decide a suspect should be 'placed under investigation' (mis en examen), which is a status one step short of being charged (inculpé), if there is 'serious or concordant' evidence that they committed a crime. Some English-language media describe this status, peculiar to French criminal law, as that of being charged. In fact, it is only at the end of an investigation that a decision can be made to bring charges, in which case the accused is automatically sent for trial.