A police armband.

Drawing.

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Witt - Sipa

  • Eight people, including six police officers from the 18th arrondissement, are on trial until Thursday in a corruption case against a background of drug trafficking.

  • At the heart of the accusations: Brigadier Karim M., suspected of being at the head of this network.

    He faces ten years in prison and a million euros fine.

  • Since the opening of the trial, he has never ceased to deny these accusations, admitting only to appeal to "informers".

At the criminal court in Paris,

What did Brigadier Karim M. and his team hope to achieve by offering Goutte d'Or dealers in the 18th arrondissement of Paris to take "insurance"?

According to the deposed police officer, in the defendants' box of the 16th chamber of the Paris Criminal Court, it was above all a question of extracting information from delinquents by making them dangle relative impunity.

The prosecution suspects him of having set up a racketeering system for drug traffickers, ensuring the protection of those who submit to it, calling on others.

"It was bluff", "a role like in the theater", repeats tirelessly the defendant, while the court broadcasts several extracts of conversations captured without the knowledge of this team of the Bac, in their vehicle.

Why did you tell this dealer, one evening in April 2019 that he was going to come and "jump" him (call him out, we deduce) after having hammered him that "we don't work without insurance on this plot ”.

What about this lookout on board the vehicle three weeks later.

Direction: Aubervilliers, outside the Bac competence area.

There again, Brigadier Karim M. promises him a quick arrest.

Unless he takes "insurance".

In this case, he would be granted "land".

"I give you the plot", he promises, a place where traffic can bring "15,000 euros per month".

The 19-year-old, obviously impressed, dodges, promises to think about it.

"It feels like a warning"

Man defends himself from any corruption, he barely recognizes unacademic methods to meet the objectives imposed by his hierarchy.

He claims that he preached the false to obtain the true, in this case information on the heads of the network or the mode of operation of such or such point of deal.

The president, Isabelle Prévost-Desprez, is cautious.

“It feels like a warning.

And what did these unofficial informants get in exchange for information?

"Nothing, we would have exploited this information.

This time, the magistrate struggles to hide her annoyance.

Since the opening of the trial, the man tackles, often answers aside what forces him to repeat, delivers eccentric explanations.

"It is difficult to understand that they work without compensation," she insists.

The policeman ended up acknowledging that he dangled them with police protection, "the fantasy of all dealers".

If the affair broke out in June 2019, following the denunciation of one of their colleagues, a police officer from the Stups brigade claims to have given the alert in 2018 on the methods of Karim M. Several of his informers him were spreading rumors about this "insurance" and envelope discounts.

One of them would have even been filmed in Vincennes.

"I never touched neither money nor Rolex," swears the defendant, believing that these rumors were intended to destabilize him because he was doing a good job.

A few meters from him in the box, a "neighborhood figure", also tried for corruption, nevertheless claims to have given him 80,000 euros in exchange for the arrest of two men "cumbersome" for his business.

"We have dishonored our profession"

If the five other police officers tried in this case take their distance from their former leader, the broadcast of other sound systems suggests that their practices were hardly more laudable.

The arrest of Ibrahima D. - which took place in the absence of Karim M. - threw a chill in the courtroom.

For long minutes we hear this man being beaten in the back of the vehicle.

"It's unbearable to hear something like that", loose the president.

There is no need for any image to guess the violence of the blows.

At the bar, the peacekeeper Alexandre C. recognizes them, just as he admits having placed two crackers on him, confiscated the day before from another dealer.

"Because he had swallowed the drug," he pleaded before the magistrate, flabbergasted.

"Do you realize that it is messy for the profession, for all citizens?

», She asks him.

Straight as an "i", hands clasped in front of the bar, the defendant tries to make amends.

“We dishonored, perhaps not our country, but our profession, the police officers who work well.

The man they were arrested was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

They face three to ten years in prison.

Justice

Trial of the Bac policemen: "I hesitated, I had never done business with a policeman"

Justice

Trial of the Bac police: The strange financial arrangements of the brigadier accused of being a ripou

  • Justice

  • Corruption

  • Drug traffic

  • Trial

  • Paris

  • Policeman