They were trying to send mobile phones to detainees via the jails of the Marseille courthouse: a police officer and a former security assistant were sentenced Thursday to prison terms, including for corruption.
Alerted to a possible traffic of phones to the Baumettes prison committed by police officers from the jails of the Marseille courthouse, the head of this service surprised, on December 2, 2016, a security assistant leaving the toilets reserved for detainees, which are not usually used by officials.
Inside, hidden behind a garbage can, he discovered several packages packed with brown tape and containing three mobile phones and their accessories.
The partner of an inmate involved
When transferred to the courthouse to be tried or heard by magistrates, detainees are not searched on departure or return.
Female DNA discovered on the packages led to the identification of the companion of a detainee, a figure of the Marseille narcobanditry. She had been in telephone contact with a police officer, an acquaintance of her neighborhood, stationed at the jails of the courthouse from 2012 to 2015.
For having served as an intermediary between this woman and the security assistant assigned to the jails, the police officer was sentenced to two years in prison, including one year to be served under electronic bracelet at home. The prisoner's girlfriend received an eight-month suspended sentence. Both were convicted of corruption and complicity in attempting to improperly hand over an object to a detainee.
300 euros per phone
The recipients of the phones had taken advantage of the trip of a fellow prisoner to court to set the date on which the operation was to take place.
The former security assistant was sentenced to two years in prison, including six months in prison, a sentence also converted to house arrest. However, he was acquitted for another delivery of which he was suspected in November 2016.
He had admitted to having requested payment for his services up to 300 euros by telephone. The police officer denied any remuneration and explained that the amount of money found by the IGPN investigators in his locker room came from a football tournament organized by a neighborhood sports association that he directed.
A fourth defendant, the wife of a detainee, was given a six-month suspended sentence for attempting to use the circuit. She wanted to have a phone delivered to her partner so he could see their newborn child.