The Lyon prosecutor's office indicted and imprisoned a 21-year-old man and his mother on Friday.

They are respectively charged with murder and aiding and abetting murder following the murder of two brothers a day apart, Sunday and Monday.

The hypothesis of a settling of scores after the death of the brother and son of the accused is being studied by the investigators. 

A 48-year-old woman and her 21-year-old son were indicted and imprisoned in Lyon on Friday.

This follows the murder Sunday and Monday of two brothers in the metropolitan area of ​​Valence, we learned on Saturday from the Lyon prosecutor's office.

Arrested by the judicial police of Valence - she in the Drôme and he in the Paris region -, the mother and her son were presented to the prosecution of the JIRS in Lyon.

The young man was indicted for "murder in an organized gang and criminal association with a view to committing a crime", while his mother is being prosecuted for "complicity", said the prosecution, confirming information from

Dauphiné Libéré

and France Bleu Drôme-Ardèche.

Both were remanded in custody.

A link to a murder committed in June?

Sunday morning, a 30-year-old man was found dead, his body riddled with several firearm impacts, also in Bourg-lès-Valence.

The next day around 6 p.m., his older brother, aged 37, was shot dead in Valencia while driving his car.

"The investigations are continuing on letter rogatory to determine the exact circumstances of the commission of the facts which appear to be part of the context of settling of scores between families", added the prosecution.

According to the radio, investigators seem to establish a link with the murder of the son and brother of the two suspects, killed by firearms in June in Bourg-lès-Valence (Drôme).

Me Antoine Barret, lawyer for the young indicted, told AFP that his client "was not on the run but did not feel safe" in the Valence area.

He also considered that the elements implicating the young man "held more suspicion but were not convincing".

"My client disputes the facts," said for his part to AFP Me Emmanuel Decombard, counsel for the mother of the family, who appears, according to him, "ideal culprit" in this case.

The link with the murder of his son is "only a hypothesis of investigators" whose investigations are "at the very beginning", he argued.