French pilot says he was tied to firing target in hazing ritual

Reuters | Paris

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A French air force pilot has filed a criminal complaint alleging that as part of a hazing ritual he was tied to a target on a firing range while fighter planes flew overhead and fired off munitions, his lawyer told Reuters on Saturday.

The complaint did not identify any of the people alleged to have carried out the hazing, or say how many of them were involved.

Reuters was not able to independently establish the identities of those responsible for the incident. Colonel Stephane Spet, a spokesman for the French air force, said an internal inquiry had been ordered by air force command and those responsible had been punished.

The most severe punishment was a restriction to barracks, Spet said. He did not say how many people had received this punishment, or for how many days. Spet said that the pilot’s safety was never in danger. The pilot said in the complaint, which was seen by Reuters, that the hazing occurred in March 2019, soon after he arrived at a combat fighter unit at the Solenzara airbase on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.

Video footage, which is cited in the complaint and was provided to Reuters by the pilot’s lawyer, Frederic Berna, also showed combat jets making several low passes nearby. The complaint alleges that, during some of these passes, the pilot tied to the target could hear the sound of live munitions being fired from the aircraft.

Spet did not dispute the authenticity of the images, but he said they created the mistaken impression that the aircraft was directing fire at the pilot who was tied to the target. He said that the firing the pilot heard was from aircraft that was on a training exercise at a different location and that the closest any munition round came to him was about one kilometre (0.6 miles).

The pilot had a hood put over his head, and was forced into the back of a pick-up truck by several colleagues who drove him to the firing range, according to the complaint. Photos, which were included in the complaint, showed a man in military fatigues with his legs and hands bound, attached to the firing range target with heavy-duty nylon straps.