Five of the ten suspects, placed in police custody Tuesday in an investigation into a vast arms trafficking in France, were indicted on Friday January 15 and four imprisoned, we learned from a judicial source.
Read also: An “extraordinary” arms trafficking involving soldiers dismantled in France
A 31-year-old soldier and a 57-year-old man were remanded in custody.
Two other suspects, a 31-year-old former soldier and a 30-year-old man, requested time to prepare their defense before the liberty and detention judge and were jailed pending this debate.
A fifth 25-year-old person has been placed under judicial control, the same source said.
All five were indicted for "
acquisition, possession, transfer and transport in assembly of weapons of categories A and B in assembly
" and "
association of criminals
", she said.
Four of them are also being prosecuted for "
possession of category C weapons
", one for "
carrying and transporting category D weapons without legitimate reason
" and one for "
weapon modification
".
The other five suspects were "
still under the control of justice
" Friday evening, said the judicial source.
The ten men are suspected of having supplied weapons to drug traffickers and supporters of the ultra-right, said sources familiar with the matter.
Among the ten suspects, "
one of them was known to be an extreme right-wing sympathizer while another was '' stuck S '' because of his links with the ultra-right
", specifies the daily
Le World
.
Two soldiers are implicated in this arms trafficking: one works at the Ministry of Defense, the second is assigned to a base in eastern France.
According to
TF1
, which had revealed the crackdown, some suspects bought from private collectors assault rifles, automatic pistols, machine guns rendered inoperative.
“
This arsenal was then made active again, remilitarized, before being sold on the black market to the highest bidders,
” the channel had specified.
The ten men were arrested Tuesday in Ile-de-France, in the east and the south of France by the brigade of repression of banditry (BRB) of the judicial police of Paris.
“
Several tons of weapons and ammunition were seized and a cache of weapons was discovered during the searches,
” explains
Le Monde
.
A judicial investigation, entrusted to investigating judges of the specialized interregional jurisdiction of Paris (Jirs), had been opened on June 25, 2020.