Settlement of armed accounts in Besançon: a second team of criminals dismantled

Fifteen people were indicted in the investigation into the armed clashes linked to drug trafficking that punctuated the life of the Planoise district of Besançon for several months, the prosecutor said Friday.

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In addition to two mothers from families suspected of " money laundering ", the young people charged with " attempted murder " and " drug trafficking in an organized gang " are minors or in their twenties, said the Besançon public prosecutor, Etienne Manteaux, during a press conference. " All of these people have been placed in pre-trial detention or under judicial supervision, and the minors have been placed in educational structures, " he said.

The wave of arrests carried out Monday in the sensitive district of Planoise has made it possible to dismantle one of the two teams suspected of having participated in the shootings which have taken place since November 2019 amid rivalries for control of the drug market. Nearly 200 police officers participated in this vast operation launched Monday at dawn and carried out by the judicial police in co-referral with the departmental security of Besançon. Weapons and narcotic drugs were seized during the searches, but no weapons of war, the prosecutor said.

A first team had already been targeted last March with the arrest and indictment of fifteen people already. A mother and seven men aged 18 to 25 were then placed in pre-trial detention and seven other persons under judicial supervision.

Between last November and March, the Planoise district was the scene of a series of attempted assassinations and the assassination by bullets of a young 23-year-old man. These shots left a dozen injured, aged 14 to 31. A district known as the Republican reconquest of 18,000 inhabitants, Planoise is in the grip of " a clan war between two teams fighting over a territory for the resale of narcotic products ", explained the prosecutor, Etienne Manteaux.

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