A former master corporal of the Foreign Legion was sentenced on Tuesday November 24 to five years imprisonment, including two years with a probationary suspension, for having participated in 2013 in arms trafficking when he was stationed in Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhône).
Read also: An agent of the French consulate in Jerusalem suspected of arms trafficking
This 37-year-old Romanian, also sentenced to a fine of 20,000 euros and now converted to the printing press, was arrested on June 29, 2013 along with two other legionaries.
The three soldiers were preparing to hand over 12 Czech Skorpion machine guns to two clients, men already convicted of narcotics cases.
For several months, investigators had wiretapped some legionaries whose coded exchanges betrayed participation in arms trafficking.
The two clients and seven other former legionaries were sentenced in September to terms of up to three years in prison.
The prosecutor Alice Mazière had requested five years in prison and a warrant of arrest against this defendant who could not be tried with the others but who, in her eyes, would be "
the thinker
" of this organization where he occupied "
a central role.
".
Talking about her missions in Afghanistan, during which her captain had been killed, Alice Mazière called out to him: “
You say that it was hot in Afghanistan, that we sometimes come back in the evening less numerous than we left in the morning, but when you put a bag of weapons in anybody's vehicle to make 200 euros per weapon, where is the awareness?
The prosecution compared this sale of remilitarized weapons of war which fire in a burst and the settling of scores committed in recent years in Marseille against a background of drug trafficking.
Son of a soldier, this former legionary who had been a non-commissioned officer in the gendarmerie in Romania admitted having committed "
a serious fault
".
But according to his defender Me Fabrice Giletta, he was only a cog, and the lawyer called on the court to "
put him in his rightful place, that of an intermediary
".
Having already served nine and a half months of pre-trial detention, his sentence can be adjusted by a sentence enforcement judge, said the president of the court.
