Suresnes: investigation opened to find the author of the telephone hoax

The alert announcing a kidnapped woman and her kidnapper armed with an explosive belt, the police obviously moved in number on Saturday evening.

Even the elite RAID unit was called upon.

But the “hostage taking” in Suresnes turned out to be a telephone prank, more precisely an act of “swatting”: a call aimed at mobilizing the police for a false alarm.

To identify the joker, the Nanterre prosecutor's office opened an investigation for "denunciation of an imaginary crime or offense".

An offense punishable by six months' imprisonment and a fine of 7,500 euros and "identity theft", punishable by one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros.

It is the police station of Saint-Cloud, recipient of the phoney call, which is responsible for carrying out the investigations.

Foreign telephone operator

At this stage, they have not made it possible to trace the trail of the one who telephoned, Saturday at the end of the day, to claim the hostage-taking.

And it is not certain that the police manage to confuse him.

“On isolated calls, it is quite rare that we go back to the author, slips a person close to the case.

The investigations succeed more easily when the acts are repeated, when we are dealing with a stalker.

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On Saturday, the man who made the alarming phone call to the Saint-Cloud police station, pretending to be the tenant of an apartment in the garden city holding a woman hostage and armed with explosives, used a line dependent on a foreign telephone operator.

This will not speed up the investigations.

In any case, from the outset, the police noted that the resident of the accommodation could not be the kidnapper.

In the apartment, only his brother was there and he immediately replied that his brother was then in Malta.

What the person confirmed by calling the police, this time for real.