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Private jet pilots, unscrupulous customs, sponsors ... several lawyers have requested the opening of the trial "Air Cocaine" on Monday, deploring the absence of two of the nine suspects in this case with twists, judged by a special court of assizes in the south-east of France.
" It is like in a plane without wings, facing a major difficulty, the absence of two defendants at this trial, " lamented in the morning Me Céline Astolfe, board of Fabrice Alcaud, one of nine accused. After three hours of deliberations by the six professional magistrates of the special assize court, authorized to judge this vast international drug trafficking "in organized gang", President Jean-Luc Tournier announced in the afternoon a "reprieve" to decide "and the continuation of the trial, without however rejecting the demands of the defense.
Six years after the first reports of suspicious transatlantic flights with the Dominican Republic, then a spectacular seizure of 680 kilograms of cocaine in a Falcon 50 jet at Punta Cana, a single accused suspected of being the sponsor, Ali Bouchareb, 47, appears detained. The other eight arrived free.
But above all, two key players, Nicolas Pisapia and Alain Castany, passengers of the Falcon 50 filled with cocaine intercepted on the tarmac of Punta Cana in 2013, have obtained in recent days that their case is dissociated.
Mr. Pisapia is the last protagonist still in the Dominican Republic. He is under judicial control with no permission to leave the island, pending a decision by the local Supreme Court on his 20-year prison sentence. Alain Castany, a septuagenarian definitively sentenced to the same punishment by the Dominican justice, repatriated by the legal way in France, is too much suffering to appear for the crime of "criminal association".
Among the defendants present are the two former fighter pilots Pascal Fauret, who is now 58, and Bruno Odos, 59, who was in charge of the jet in the Dominican Republic during the night of 19 to 20 March 2013. The police then discovered 26 suitcases of drugs, wedged in the holds and even in the lounge area of a Falcon 50. The private jet was preparing to take off for France, via the Azores. " We must organize a trial in which everyone can express themselves in a complete and contradictory way, " said their lawyer, Antoine Vey.
These two Frenchmen had been immediately arrested just like the passengers, Nicolas Pisapia and Alain Castany. Despite their denials, they will be sentenced by the Dominican justice in 2015 to twenty years in prison. Since then, their destinies have separated: the pilots managed to flee clandestinely towards France. The interrogations of these two veterans of the naval air force and the Air Force to the virgin criminal records remain among the most awaited in the hundreds of testimonies and hearings of experts programmed during the seven weeks of trial.
Penalties of up to 30 years of criminal imprisonment are incurred at the end of this trial, the most important of the year before the Assize Court in Aix-en-Provence, which will last until April 5th.
(With Afp)