Cold storage
(No user rating) (from exoNews - 19 February 2001)children keep mum about the house
BORDEAUX, France, May 30 (Reuters) - A brother and sister who cannot bear to be separated from their deceased mother may not keep her corpse in a glass-fronted freezer at their home, a French appeals court has ruled.Joelle Leroy, 50, and her 52-year-old brother Michel -- both unmarried and deeply devoted to their mother -- wanted to install her last resting place in the basement of their house on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion.
But the court ruled on Monday that, "The conservation of a dead person through freezing is not considered as a way of treating a body in the eyes of the law."
The body of Lise Leroy has been kept in a morgue freezer in Reunion since she died last July.
Local authorities rejected the Leroys' request and the pair, both teachers, took the case to the court in this southwestern French city which deals with appeals from distant Reunion.
"We think we are suffering an injustice here. French law is the toughest in the world with regards to this," said Joelle Leroy, who said she and her brother might take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
"We refuse to see our mother forcibly buried," she said.
Under French law, bodies can be either buried or cremated.
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