The commissioner risks 15 years of criminal imprisonment. The trial of former anti-drug boss François Thierry, accused of having organized false custody of a trafficker recruited as an informant, will be held at the end of September in Lyon, AFP learned on Friday from a judicial source. The former head of the anti-narcotics office will appear from September 23 to 27 before the Rhône criminal court, made up of professional judges, this source indicated.
His dismissal for “forgery in public documents by a person holding public authority” and “destruction of evidence” was validated in July by the Court of Cassation. François Thierry is accused of having drawn up a false police custody report to justify the extraction from prison, in April 2012, of a major cannabis trafficker, Sofiane Hambli, recruited as an informant. This maneuver would have allowed him to coordinate, remotely, a drug delivery.
The commissioner had acknowledged the facts while refuting any infringement, on the grounds that the measure had been taken in consultation, according to him, with magistrates from the Paris public prosecutor's office. The latter, however, denied during the investigation having been aware of a false preliminary investigation. He faces fifteen years of criminal imprisonment for these facts, which are part of a sprawling affair relating to the methods of Ocrtis, the former Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Drug Trafficking that the police officer headed from 2010 to 2016.
Also indicted
François Thierry is also indicted in the main part of the case, investigated in Bordeaux and which concerns the record seizure in the heart of Paris in 2015 by customs of seven tonnes of cannabis. The investigating judges must still decide whether or not to follow the requisitions made in December by the prosecution in favor of dismissing the case concerning him.
The investigation showed that the drugs had arrived in France as part of a controlled delivery, operated by Ocrtis with the help of Sofiane Hambli. Commissioner Thierry is suspected of having favored the importation of the goods without having fully informed the judicial authority of the terms of the operation, nor of his proximity to this informant whom he managed directly. The affair shook the anti-drug system and led to the replacement of Ocrtis by Ofast (Anti-Narcotics Office) in 2019.