Where is the investigation into the mutilation of horses?

White horses, in the Hérault (illustration).

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• Forty cases of mutilation of horses have been identified in recent weeks in about thirty French departments.

• The Interior Ministers, Gérald Darmanin and Agriculture, Julien Denormandie are due to go to Oise on Monday to meet an affected breeder.

• A man was arrested in the Haut-Rhin and taken into police custody on Monday. 

• 20 Minutes

  takes stock of the investigation, coordinated by the Central Office for the Fight against Environmental and Public Health Attacks (OCLAESP).

Côte d'Or, Cantal, Isère or even Val-d'Oise ... For several weeks, not a day has gone by without one or more horses being found mutilated.

These acts of cruelty, which multiplied during the summer, now affect around thirty departments.

Faced with the growing panic among breeders, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, and Julien Denormandie, the Minister of Agriculture, must go to Val-d'Oise, this Monday afternoon, to meet affected owner and attend a business meeting.

takes stock of this case and the ongoing investigation.

• Why are we talking about mutilations of horses?

For several weeks, psychosis has set in among equine breeders, faced with acts of barbarism.

Cut ear, laceration of the belly or genitals, torn eye, shattered skull ... Each time, it is the atrocity of acts that calls out.

According to a note from the central territorial intelligence service (SCRT), unveiled on Saturday by our colleagues from the

, 34 acts of cruelty on equines have been recorded since January.

Among these cases, about twenty concern mutilation.

Latest horror to date, a mare found dead and particularly mutilated, Saturday evening, in Cantal.

The owners discovered it in its pasture, "disemboweled, one ear less and the breasts cut," said the Aurillac parquet on Sunday.

The Val-d'Oise also recorded its first two cases on Saturday: two mares, which did not die - one with a cut in the vulva and the other with a cut of 30 centimeters on the side - were discovered in a meadow of Vexin.

On Sunday, in Côte-d'Or, a large gendarmerie device was deployed to find two suspects, after a horse owner reported an intrusion into his meadow where a horse was injured, corroborating sources announced.

• Who coordinates the investigation?

These mutilations of horses which have occurred in around thirty departments constitute a challenge for the investigators, these acts being the act of several authors acting according to different operating methods.

At the national level, the Central Office for the Fight against Attacks on the Environment and Public Health (OCLAESP) coordinates the follow-up of investigations.

"All the procedural elements are gathered at the central criminal intelligence service," Colonel Hubert Percie du Sert, coordinator of the judicial police sub-directorate of the gendarmerie, indicated this week.

There are "about twenty cases of cut ears, but there are also genital mutilation, lacerations with sharp objects," he explained recently.

• What are the avenues studied by the gendarmerie?

Challenge launched on the Internet, sectarian aberrations, mimicry, hatred of equines, satanic rites ... For the moment, the authorities are not ruling out any leads.

A single certainty for the investigators, the authors are several and act in different departments.

This Monday, a man was arrested in the Haut-Rhin and taken into custody, announced a source close to the investigation.

According to our colleagues from Le

, the man, suspected of being the author of attacks on horses in the Yonne on the night of August 24 to 25, was arrested this Monday morning by the gendarmes of the research section from Dijon (Côte-d'Or).

“A good part of our job is to differentiate between human cases and others.

And among the first, distinguish what is a phenomenon, with an ear cut off by people who know horses, and what is mimicry, where people let off steam on animals.

What is certain: in 20 to 25% of cases, the human origin is beyond doubt, ”explained General Jacques Diacono, head of OCLAESP at

Solicited "at the end of March-beginning of April" by the gendarmerie, the interministerial mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian aberrations (Miviludes) did not reveal any satanic rite.

The other hypothesis is that of a macabre challenge launched on groups created on the Darknet, the hidden network of the Internet, Facebook, WhatsApp or Telegram.

This theory could explain "the plurality of authors and modes of operation", but also the dissemination, all over France, of these acts of cruelty.

While some equines have been hit in the ears, flanks or eyes, other animals, such as calves or alpacas, have also been targeted.

"We have seen an acceleration of the phenomenon since August, which pushes us not to exclude imitators, 

 ", added

Jacques Diacono with our colleagues.

• How do the breeders and owners of equines react?

Rounds, checks, reports… On the side of the breeders, the sling is getting organized.

At the beginning of September, a mother and her daughter, who wanted to take justice into their own hands, threatened with weapons two motorists whom they suspected of abuse on horses.

On the social media side, a Facebook page entitled "Justice for our horses" was created last June by the owner of a wildly mutilated mare.

This private group, followed by nearly 20,400 members, "aims to bring together victim owners and invite the equine community to vigilance", explained Pauline Sarrazin, who administers this page, to

.

The gendarmes ask the breeders "to call the police and not to intervene themselves".

Horse owners are also invited to equip themselves with “hunting cameras”, to visit their animals more often in the meadows, to remove their halter and to report all facts to the gendarmes.

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