‘We’re being kept in dark over son’s death despite French pledge’

A SCOTS mother has said she will continue her fight to discover how her son died in France despite the French president reneging on a promise to help uncover the facts.

Andrew Watt, 31, died alone in a country lane, 140 miles west of Paris, in September 2010.

His mother, Julie Sheppard, 51, a teacher from Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, wrote to president Nicolas Sarkozy asking for his help.

Mr Sarkozy gave personal assurances the case would be reviewed, but has since backed down, saying he cannot intervene.

French officials said Mr Watt died from heart failure related to medication he was taking for mental health problems.

Mrs Sheppard said she was refused access to documents from a judicial inquiry and an inquest into his death and was not informed it had been held.

A third investigation, carried out by the coroner’s office in Durham, Mr Watt’s home town, is ongoing.

In the meantime, Mrs Sheppard said she would press French officials to find out what happened to her son.

She said: “It’s very frustrating. Everything is just shutting down on us – the French authorities just want us to go away but we’re not going to.

“The British embassy feel the French won’t give any information and so they have shut down on us too.

“So far they have been giving the answers that they want to give. You are almost kept in the dark to the point where you realise they could actually get away with murder.”

Mrs Sheppard claimed the medication French doctors prescribed to Andrew may have contributed to a decline in his health.

She said: “They’re holding back this information possibly because they know that they did something wrong with his medication.

“Andrew was put on an enormous amount of medication which has caused fatalities in France and the States. It hasn’t been approved in the UK and that’s why I think they know that something went wrong.”

She said she also wants to know why it took more than 20 hours for the alarm to be raised after he went missing from his home.

After his death, it took three months for the authorities to return his body, but the family were angered that some body parts, including his brain, heart and a lung, were missing.