The trial of the six members of a gang of drug dealers suspected of being the perpetrators of bloody shootings against the background of drug trafficking control, in 2019-2020 in the Planoise district, opened under tension this Monday in court. correctional of Besançon.
Presented as members of the “
Picardie
” clan, named after the street in which they raged in the Planoise district of Besançon, they must answer for aggravated violence with a weapon, criminal association and drug trafficking.
A seventh member of the gang is on the run and is the subject of an arrest warrant.
heated debates
Last June, seven members of the rival clan were tried for the same facts and six were sentenced to terms of 3 to 10 years' imprisonment by the same court.
One had been released.
On Monday, the six defendants took their places in the correctional courtroom, closely watched by agents from the judicial extraction unit with the reinforcement of a special police unit.
The faces of the officials were concealed for security reasons.
The request for dismissal made by the lawyer of one of the defendants was rejected and the trial, which should last until Thursday, has therefore opened.
But the debates were quickly tense and this first hearing was marked by an exchange of insults between two of the defendants, provoking the intervention of the president.
Between November 2019 and March 2020 the two rival gangs had clashed for the control of drug trafficking in the district of republican reconquest (QRR) of Planoise.
This gang war had given rise to 18 episodes of firefights, resulting in a total of 11 wounded on both sides, including minors, and a 23-year-old dead.
A total of 57 people had been indicted in this case which had greatly shaken the approximately 20,000 inhabitants of Planoise.
