It was around 5 a.m. when police officers from the OCRB, the Central Office for the Repression of Banditry, broke into the Relais des Chasses, a hotel-restaurant in the city center, an institution in the Central African capital for many years. .
In total: 10 people, employees and customers, are arrested and taken away. The police will return at the end of the morning to carry out new searches while the interrogations are in progress.
Two Central Africans and a Ghanaian were quickly released. Then two French people, including a FIFA employee, in the afternoon.
Five other Europeans – two French, an Italian, a Belgian and a Spaniard – were questioned for several more hours in the premises of the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance at the port of Bangui, until their release at the start of the evening. They are summoned this Friday morning March 10 to the DST for new hearings.
The reason for these searches and arrests was not communicated, but according to local sources, the police would have looked for highly flammable products.