Since the start of his house arrest, over twenty-five years ago, Garbis Dilge had almost never left the department of Creuse. He ended up dying there at the age of 68, following a serious illness and totally alone, at the Sainte-Feyre hospital, announced his lawyers on March 5. No one knows where he will be buried at the moment, the decision is in the hands of the prefecture … of the Creuse.
Garbis Dilge was probably the oldest under house arrest in France. Born in Türkiye and of Armenian origin, he was under an expulsion decree and two judicial prohibitions from the French territory issued in the 1990s, after convictions for the detention of narcotics and weapons. But as he had refugee status since the 1970s, he was inexpulsible at the end of his prison sentence in 1999.
The world had met him in the village of Auzances, 1,200 inhabitants, where he had lived for some time after being assigned for years in Aubusson. He did not like himself in the Creuse and wanted to find the Paris region, where he had distant family.
Since the fall of 2023, the law firm Bourdon et Associés, who had decided to represent it Pro Bonohad tried in vain to raise his house arrest. His lawyers had “Multiply remedies” and alerted the prefectural authorities and the administrative courts of his state of health. Nothing has done it.
“Our indignation is total”
“The situation was so unworthy that Mr. Garbis Dilge received the gendarmes visit to his hospital bed, to ensure his presence and his bay obligation”explain MMe Bourdon, Brengarth and Villetard in a deploring statement that he could not receive “An ounce of dignity, if only to die”. Garbis Dilge was the subject of a “Administrative relentlessness” and “The most total indifference” of the state, add its advice.
According to the prefecture of Creuse, contacted by the France-Presse agency, Mr. Dilge “Persisted over a long period in his delinquent and recurrent behavior”. Me Brengarth denounces “A total disproportion with regard to the seniority of the facts and the absence of any current disturbance in public order”. “Our indignation is total”add me Villetard. Indeed, after a year without news, the administrative court of Limoges hastened to put in notice the law firm to say, within fifteen days, if the beneficiaries of Mr. Dilge were going to continue the procedure in progress to raise his assignment.
According to the general management of foreigners, France had 19,427 house arrest in 2022.