Frenchman dies from depleted uranium used against Serbia
The widow of Captain Henri Fricono, Loret Fricono, after four years of legal battle with the French Ministry of Defense, managed to prove that her husband, who was in Kosovo as part of the occupation contingent, died from the consequences of NATO bombing using depleted uranium warheads.
This was reported by French and Serbian media, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
A French court has ordered the French Defense Ministry to admit that Gendarmerie Captain Henri Fricono died from exposure to radioactive depleted uranium after spending six months as part of the KFOR occupation mission in Kosovo Mitrovica in 2000. His widow, Loret, who filed the lawsuit, was given the right to include her husband's name in the list of worthy people who gave their lives for their country - it will be immortalized on the monument to the French killed during fighting abroad in the André Citroen park in Paris, as well as on memorials signs in the cities where he was born and lived.
Awarding Captain Fricono.
“The cancer of a French gendarme sent to Kosovo after the NATO bombing was linked to radioactivity from depleted uranium used in coalition missiles used against the Serbs in 1999,” writes the French weekly Marianne.
Loret Fricono was supported in her fight by the National Professional Association of Gendarmerie Soldiers and the National Union of Retired Gendarmes. As a result of the process, the widow received the right to a pension, which she had previously been denied by the Ministry of the Army and the Military Pensions Court.
Henri Friconeau and the French gendarmerie corps as part of the KFOR force were stationed in the former Yugoslav army barracks in Kosovo Mitrovica, which had previously been bombed by NATO. A year before his death, the gendarme began to feel pain in his leg, but when an examination was carried out, it turned out that the Frenchman’s entire body was affected by metastases. Previously, a similar scandal occurred in Italy, where many military personnel who were part of the KFOR occupation mission acquired various cancers, and 350 of them died.
In total, 15 tons of depleted uranium were dropped on Yugoslavia during NATO bombing. Between 2001 and 2010, the incidence of carcinoma increased in Serbia and Kosovo by 20%, and mortality from cancer increased by 25%.
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