The former head of OCRTIS (Central Office for the Suppression of Illicit Drug Trafficking) is on trial from Monday, September 23 at the Lyon court for “forgery” and “destruction of evidence” by a public official. François Thierry is accused of organizing a false police custody of a trafficker recruited as an informant and of destroying documents and telephones related to this fictitious event. The man who now heads the digital strategy of the national police faces 15 years of criminal imprisonment.
First part of a sprawling affair
François Thierry is accused of having written a false police custody report to justify the removal from prison, in April 2012, of his main “informant”, Sofiane Hambli, considered one of the biggest importers of cannabis in France and who was serving a thirteen-year prison sentence for drug trafficking. The commissioner acknowledges the facts but, according to him, the measure was taken in consultation with the Paris prosecutor’s office. “I don’t recognise myself at all in the way (…) in which I am being pursued” and “many things are relative to the context”, he said at the start of the hearing, assuring that the operations at the heart of the procedure “were not ridden by a cowboy whose fiery character could be described” and that “These were not things done lightly, pulled out of my hat one morning”.
Hubert Avoine, another of the commissioner’s informants, accuses, in a book co-written with the journalist, Release Emmanuel Fansten (The Infiltrator, Robert Laffont, 2017), François Thierry for having organized logistics well beyond the needs of the service.
This trial is the first part of a sprawling case concerning the methods of OCRTIS, which François Thierry headed from 2010 to 2016 and which has since been replaced by Ofast (Office anti-narcotics). The scandal broke in October 2015 when customs discovered seven tons of cannabis in the middle of Paris. The investigation quickly showed that the drug had arrived in France as part of another “controlled delivery”, operated by OCRTIS with the help of Sofiane Hambli. The office and its boss are suspected of having facilitated the importation of the goods.
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