Police officers, here in Bordeaux.
(illustration) -
NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
Nine people belonging to a network of robbers in the Lyon region suspected of various attacks, including that of the Kalashnikov, last May, of a convoy of cigarettes, were arrested Tuesday, announced Friday the national gendarmerie.
An imposing device, made up of "nearly 200 people", was deployed to arrest these people in the Ain and the Rhône, added the gendarmerie in a statement.
The group is suspected of serial burglaries of shops, an armory and a robbery in May 2020, in the Lyon region of a convoy of cigarettes.
They had then operated, armed with Kalashnikovs before setting fire to the three vehicles of the convoy.
The amount of the loot had not been disclosed.
After this robbery and faced with an increase in thefts during the first half of 2020, the Lyon judicial court had opened a judicial investigation, recalled the gendarmerie.
A long-term operation
It is within this framework that an investigation unit was set up under the aegis of the Central Office for the Fight against Traveling Delinquency (OCLDI), bringing together investigators from its Sathonay-Camp detachment as well as from the research section of Lyon and the Rhône group.
Last Tuesday, the gendarmes intervened in several places, in the Ain and the Rhône in order to question the nine people implicated.
This operation, added the gendarmerie, followed “the arrest last August of two individuals belonging to the same criminal team”.
During searches, investigators seized "several vehicles, weapons and break-in equipment".
The gendarmerie specified that "the evidence gathered implicates these individuals on many facts".
Society
Nine million stolen during the robbery of the van in Lyon, one of the biggest loot since the Musulin affair
Miscellaneous
Fighting in a Lyon hypermarket for a robber who was not one
Police
Lyon
Robbery
Robber