2024-04-13 18:41:06
A few weeks ago, 3 Carole police officers from the department responsible for combating narcotics were placed under arrest warrant. One of them was even linked to the Lodelinsart file where one of their colleagues had lost his life during a search. Could this affair undermine the investigations they have carried out and cancel certain prosecutions?
In February 2021, we met one of the accused police officers from the narcotics squad of the local police in Charleroi. This agent who tracks down street dealers in particular shared with us his reality on the ground.
“When we sometimes work several weeks, sometimes several months, we hit the upper echelons of criminal organizations and sometimes we seize 1, 2, 3 kilos of goods, whether it be coke, heroin, cannabis, 10,000 euros, scales, telephones “he said.
He is now worried in particular for forgery, embezzlement and breach of trust. Two other colleagues are also being prosecuted. One of them for having had direct and precise links with Ricardo Gomez in the file which is brought to the dramatic search of Lodelinsart. Will these indictments once morest law enforcement agents undermine the investigations that they themselves have carried out into drug cases?
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“Given the nature of the charges, it is entirely possible that the defense will raise, in the cases in which they have intervened, the question of the validity of certain acts, in particular the regularity of the hearings, the regularity of the searches“, explains Olivier Dupont, criminal lawyer at the Liège bar.
Faced with the courts, traffickers’ lawyers might therefore raise their concerns regarding the loyalty of these police officers and request the cancellation of the proceedings. “Because that might obviously cast doubt on these investigations and these lawyers will check whether there has been any disloyalty of the investigation or violation of the right to defense, which might lead a court to consider whether it is obvious, that the prosecution is inadmissible and that therefore the people will not be convicted“, explains Henri Laquay, lawyer specializing in criminal law.
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There are now dozens of ongoing investigations and files that will be dissected. Investigations carried out by these three police officers concerning drug trafficking on different scales and which are now tainted by serious suspicion.
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