In order to supply dealers in Melun (Seine-et-Marne) with weapons of war, these two young people took all the risks for a few thousand euros.
These two boys, aged 21 and 22, were indicted last October by the interregional jurisdiction of Paris (JIRS) before being imprisoned.
It is the starting point of a vast international investigation, which is still in progress and where three European police forces are hard at work.
On October 5, the customs officers of Cambrai (North) tried to stop a BMW which arrived at the toll with two men on board.
The driver accelerates and the customs officers chase him.
The passenger throws a bag before the fugitives are arrested.
A truck driver picks up this bag and brings it back to the officers.
When they open it, officials find that it contains four Kalashnikov assault rifles, four magazines, 118 7.62 caliber ammunition, and a Sakharov pistol with its ammunition.
4000 euros to cross the border
The customs officers transmit the procedure and their suspects to the investigators of the regional direction of the judicial police of Versailles, because these two men live near Melun.
During the first auditions, they bring a fanciful version: they would have met a stranger on the road, this man would have given them this bag and asked to pass it to the tollbooth.
But quickly, the two men will sit down to table.
"They claim that they met in a bar in Melun a certain Osman, whom he allegedly offered to carry a bag without asking any questions," said a source close to the case.
The investigations will show that behind these statements is in fact hiding a mission carried out for local traffickers who wanted to arm themselves in order to defend a point of deal.
The two young people were to share 4000 euros for the trip.
They would have accepted, seduced by the prospect of easily making this money, especially since the driver of the car had a debt to repay.
A cache of weapons in Belgium
The investigation prospered and the PJ police understood that these weapons came from Belgium.
Their Belgian colleagues will find, a few days later, a cache of weapons where twenty-one Kalashnikov assault rifles, twenty magazines, eleven pistols and two silencers were hidden.
They also arrested three arms traffickers.
French investigators noted that the two boys had already visited this sector of Belgium in August and had made eighteen calls in the kingdom.
The advice of one of the young people, Me Sarah Mauger Poliak, recalls that the criminal record of his client is blank.
"He is completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of this insane file," she said.
He's a friend of a friend who gets in the car to earn 2,000 euros.
This young man had no connection with organized crime or drug trafficking.
He worked as a heavy-duty mechanic in a transport company in Ile-de-France.
According to our information, other investigations must still be carried out in France, Belgium and the Netherlands in this case.
"We will of course have to try to identify the origin of its weapons which seem to come from Eastern Europe", explains a source close to the case.
"To defend their territory, all traffickers are armed"
"As soon as they have to defend their stocks or when they go Fast, all drug traffickers are armed," confirms a general of the gendarmerie.
The proponents of narco-banditism are supplied through the Balkans, in Montenegro and in Serbia via the diaspora installed in Ile-de-France.
And the price is not prohibitive for dealers who brew tens of thousands of euros.
A Kalashnikov-type war weapon is sold for 2,500 euros each with two magazines and a stocked automatic pistol is bought on the black market for around 1,500 euros.
According to our information, only for the first quarter of this year, no less than 28 weapons were seized by the police on the points of deal of the Parisian agglomeration.
Big crime and drug trafficking, an explosive mix of genres
At the beginning of last February, the investigators of the OFAST, anti-narcotics office, carried out a surprising seizure of weapons in a pavilion in Val-de-Marne.
The owner, who was the nanny of a semi-wholesaler of the Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) deal points, was not only hiding narcotics but also a veritable arsenal of war.
Twenty firearms and hundreds of ammunition were seized, including Kalashnikov, HK, M16 assault rifles, submachine guns, a Glock or even a Mauser sniper rifle.
But also explosives, TNT and pentrite (another type of explosive) with their firing systems.
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The director of OFAST, Stéphanie Cherbonnier, considers that this case is new proof "of the porosity that exists between the world of organized crime and that of drug trafficking".
A lawyer in this case evokes for his part a stock of weapons "which was intended to defend the points of deal or to wage the turf war between the traffickers of the city who have already made many deaths".
The elite troops more and more in demand
Thierry Sabot, assistant police commissioner for the RAID, intervenes with OFAST when it comes to a network of "great importance".
DR.
This over-equipment of dealers sometimes exceeds investigators, who must call on elite forces to help them in their interventions.
"Most of the time the judicial police units use their own search and intervention brigades (BRI) to ensure dangerous arrests", explains Thierry Sabot, deputy commissioner of the RAID.
We are also more and more called upon by OFAST, the anti-narcotics office, when it comes to a network of greater importance. "
Faced with these dealers who are not necessarily trained in combat, does he often meet resistance?
"We use the maximum surprise and the effect of numbers which make it possible to limit the tendencies of resistance of the traffickers, details the commissioner.
If the criminals try to open fire on the police, too bad for them.
But fortunately, this has never happened in the context of arrests of drug traffickers.
Most of the time, even when they display a weapon, it ends up with a percussion to the shield.
Everything goes very quickly at such times and it is very rare that they have the time to open fire.
We also intervene to arrest criminals who bring drugs back by car from Spain during go fast. ”