A commando sequestered during the night from Sunday to Monday the crew of a boat anchored in Dunkirk, on board which more than a ton of cocaine had been seized.
An investigation was opened, AFP learned from the prosecution and from a police source.
Arrested on October 1, the boat "Trudy", flying the flag of Liberia,
"was placed under seal"
according to the Dunkirk prosecutor's office, with a
"relief"
crew on board
,
according to a source close to the investigation.
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"Around 1:00 am, ten individuals kidnapped twenty members of the crew, some were assaulted,"
said a police source, confirming information from the daily
La Voix du Nord
. "The likely goal was to recover drugs and money,"
but the people
"left at 5:00 am empty-handed,
" added the same source. According to the first elements of the investigation, some members of the crew
"would have been tied up"
, the commando was
"violent, threatening"
, some being armed
"with wooden sticks"
, the Dunkirk prosecutor's office told AFP. , but
"there would a priori be no serious physical injuries among the crew".
According to the prosecution, the members of the commando spoke
"rather in English"
, and
"would have carried out a search of the ship accompanied by the captain but a priori without taking anything in particular".
The investigation was initially opened for
"sequestration
" and was entrusted to the judicial police, specified the prosecutor's office of Dunkirk. But the Paris prosecutor's office said later on Monday that the National Jurisdiction against Organized Crime (Junalco), based in Paris, had seized the open flagrance investigation for
"kidnapping and forcible confinement in an organized gang, thefts in an organized gang , and criminal association ”
, and had entrusted it to Ofast, the anti-narcotics office.
On October 1, more than 1.1 tons of cocaine had been discovered in the holds of Trudy, that is to say
"the most important"
seizure
"carried out in the French territorial waters in the Hexagon since 2018"
, had been delighted in a press release Olivier Dussopt, Minister Delegate in charge of Public Accounts.
Among the twenty members of the initial crew, nineteen had been indicted as part of this first investigation and fifteen of them imprisoned, a judicial source said on Wednesday.
Coming from Brazil and after a stopover in Spain, the Trudy was on her way to the port of Antwerp (Belgium) with a cargo of chalk.
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