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Take dead parents off ice
11/01/2006 08:42 - (SA)
Angers - France's highest court has ordered a Frenchman to remove his dead parents from two deep-freeze caskets kept for years in the cellar of his chateau and either bury or cremate them.
The Conseil d'Etat tribunal ruled that Remy Martinot had no right to maintain his parents' corpses in the freezers cooled to minus 65 degree Celsius in his Loire valley property in Neuil-sur-Layon, Martinot's lawyer said on Tuesday.
Martinot had been carrying out the wishes of his father, Raymond Martinot, a former doctor who hoped that, one day, he and his wife Monique would be brought back to life.
Raymond Martinot, a fan of cryogenic theory, had kept his wife's body frozen since she died in 1984 at the age of 49, and showed off her crypt to visiting tourists for a fee to help pay for upkeep of the equipment.
He joined her on his death in 2002, and Remy Martinot filed a legal request the following year to keep their corpses on ice.
But the Conseil d'Etat's verdict, delivered on Friday, dashed his hopes by stating that "the interests of public order and public health" overrode the family's wishes and burial or cremation remained the only options.
Martinot's lawyer, Alain Fouquet, said his client was now thinking of appealing the decision before the European Court of Human Rights.
- AFP
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South Africa
