2024-10-30 05:16:00
First investigations after the discovery of the charred body of a man in the forest of Thise (Doubs), March 9, 2023. VALENTIN COLLIN/“L’EST REPUBLICAIN”/MAXPPP
No one has seen “Madame” for four days. Madame is 77 years old, so the story could be that of a worrying disappearance as happens at that age. But Madame was not lost, she was kidnapped. The small town of Trévoux (Ain) is stunned. In the early morning of June 21, four hooded men arrived, weapons in hand, in the quiet subdivision of this town of 7,000 inhabitants and broke down the door of a small house. Madame was there, as they had expected. Here she is loaded into the trunk of a BMW. The investigations carried out by the department’s gendarmes quickly passed into the hands of other investigators, more intended to deal with organized crime than the disappearances of elderly people: those of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Lille.
Because, through the septuagenarian with a clean criminal record, it is one of her sons, less immaculate, who would have been targeted. Madame was found four days later, shocked and weakened. And the small town of Trévoux finds itself placed at the heart of a sprawling international drug trafficking case – sensitive to the point of making it impossible even to use the initial of the victim’s first name – and despite itself becomes the symbol of a growing phenomenon on French territory: the use of kidnapping and sequestration, sometimes associated with barbaric acts, to resolve commercial disputes linked to drug trafficking.
A man kidnapped from the parking lot of a supermarket in Castelmoron-sur-Lot, in Lot-et-Garonne, left for dead in March in the Migelane forest, in Gironde; another, disappeared in March 2023 in the Doubs, whose body was discovered still in flames by a hiker in the municipal forest of Thise… To these scenes crossed in a few lines in the news pages of the regional daily newspapers, the same laconic response is provided by the investigators interviewed: “Settling of scores against a backdrop of drug trafficking. »
Very young teams
A reappearance of kidnapping in the toolbox of criminal organizations, with something new since the golden age of sausage makers who, around forty years ago, targeted wealthy personalities to ensure a juicy return on investment: subcontracting to very young teams, compensating for their inexperience with unbridled violence. “In recent years, the phenomenon has evolved from an approach aimed at recovering a ransom towards a sort of recovery method, particularly in drug trafficking, where the “narco” is less and less often involved in dirty deeds. , preferring to delegate either to teams specialized in “force operations”, or to young recruits”underlines Yann Sourisseau, head of the Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime.
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