The hunt to capture the "skinners" who mutilate and kill equines across France is accelerating.
This Monday, a man was arrested in the Haut-Rhin and placed in police custody in the investigation opened at the end of August in the Yonne, after abuse inflicted on a saddle horse and two ponies, slashed with weapons white.
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"I do not sleep any more at night": faced with mutilated horses, the breeders are mobilizing
Awakened by the cries of animals, Nicolas Demajean, president of the Ranch of Hope, a refuge located in Villefranche-Saint-Phal, had been able to establish a composite portrait of one of the two attackers.
If the gendarmes remain cautious about the implication of the suspect heard, on whom biological comparisons must be made, this arrest comes when Gérald Darmanin went to the Oise, in the company of his counterpart in Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, with breeders and an industry that is gnawing at its heart.
"There are 153 investigations opened on half of the departments, including about thirty serious facts"
, revealed Monday the Minister of the Interior, who calls for
"general mobilization of the State and the French"
to report any clue at the gendarmerie.
"We are facing a phenomenon whose claims we do not understand"
, conceded the minister.
Several hypotheses
"There are about twenty cases of cut ears, but there are also other facts, genital mutilation, lacerations with sharp objects
,
"
Colonel Hubert Percie du Sert recently said. , coordinator of the sub-directorate of the judicial police of the gendarmerie.
In addition to horses and ponies, donkeys and even an alpaca, a camelid from the lamas family found dead in Lot-et-Garonne, were also the target of these atrocities.
With regard to
"the plurality of authors and operating methods"
, all the hypotheses are considered: sectarian excesses, acts of mimicry, hatred of equines, settling of scores in the equestrian world, satanic rites.
Asked last spring, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight Against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes) did not highlight any signs reminiscent of devil worshipers.
The trail of a sordid challenge launched on the Darknet or via encrypted messaging is also explored.
Combined with the media coverage of business since August, the latter could explain the increase in acts of cruelty across the country.
One thing seems certain: this equipped savage could not be the work of a single man.
Ulcerated, owners of horses equipped with a cutter and a dummy weapon controlled two motorists over the weekend on a country road in Finistère.
Their car, spotted in the area, had been posted on social networks.
"The breeders and owners of horses are very worried, but they cannot carry out illegal checks on the public highway"
, warned the commander of the Finistère gendarmerie group, Colonel Nicolas Duvinage.
Under strong pressure, the investigators are working to elucidate this enigma as soon as possible, before it turns into a tragedy by causing human blood to flow against a background of self-defense.
In a call for wisdom, Gérald Darmanin urges
“the owners not to do justice themselves, which would be drama within drama”
.
