Shot fired at Chirac ‘could have killed’

PARIS, Jan 14 (AFP) – The gun-shot that was fired at French President Jacques Chirac during a Bastille Day parade in 2002 was powerful enough to have killed him, according to a ballistics report released Wednesday.

Would-be assassin Maxime Brunerie used a .22 hunting rifle and a lead bullet capable of killing at 400 metres (1,310 ft), according to the report, and Chirac was only 20 metres away when he was fired on from among the crowd on the Champs Elysees. The single bullet fired was never found.

A militant of the extreme right, Brunerie, 26, was judged mentally fit to stand trial in a psychiatrist’s report last September.

© AFP

                                Subject: France news