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CRIME

Paris: Suspected ‘narco-torpedo’ drug ring on trial

Thirteen people went on trial near Paris on Thursday suspected of concealing huge quantities of cocaine in "narco-torpedos" -- bullet-shaped stashes bolted to the hulls of container ships.

Published: 8 September 2017 09:07 CEST
Paris: Suspected 'narco-torpedo' drug ring on trial
File photo: Cocaine. AFP
The months-long investigation involved intensive surveillance.
   
The ring was allegedly led by two men, a 39-year-old who smuggled cocaine from the French West Indies to France and a 32-year-old who brought in hash from Morocco.
   
The smugglers were well equipped with fake passports, encrypted cell phones, cars registered in false names, and rented apartments and parking spots in Paris.
   
Two members even learned to fly helicopters, paying 80,000 euros ($96,000) in cash for a course, prosecutors have said.
   
Police first learned of the use of “narco-torpedoes” for transatlantic drug-running in April 2014.
 
Agents overheard planning in the northern French port of Dunkirk for an operation to recover a “torpedo” using frogmen who would use an underwater scooter to get to their target.
   
A first effort to bust the ring failed, but police recovered the scent in November 2014.
   
This time divers were spotted in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Police quickly identified a container ship headed for Spain that they suspected had a “narco-torpedo” attached to its hull.
   
The ship, diverted to the French Mediterranean port of Toulon, was carrying a net holding seven kilos (15.4 pounds) of cocaine but it was torn and had lost most of its contents.
 
The clincher came in March 2015 in Dunkirk, above-decks this time, when some 120 kilos of cocaine was found stashed between containers.
   
A laboratory determined that the cocaine was similar to that seized in Toulon.
   
The trial in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre is expected to last a month.
   
Six suspected members of the crime ring remain at large.

CRIME

French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

A 14-year-old girl has died of a heart attack in eastern France after her school locked down to protect itself from a knife attacker who lightly wounded two other girls, an official said on Friday.

Published: 20 April 2024 08:58 CEST
French teen dies from heart failure after knife attack near school

The teenager “was rescued by teachers who were very fast to call the fire department. She died at the end of the afternoon,” education official Olivier Faron said.

The girl’s middle school in the village of Souffelweyersheim closed its doors on Thursday afternoon after a man stabbed two other girls aged 7 and 11 outside a nearby primary facility.

“Sadly this pupil underwent an episode of very high stress that led to a heart attack,” Faron said.

A mother outside the middle school on Friday morning said her son in first year of secondary had also been scared during the lockdown the previous day.

“Whereas in the primary school they made it more like a game, perhaps here it was a little too direct,” Deborah Wendling said.

“He thought there was an armed person in the school. They could hear doors slamming, but in fact it was just other classrooms locking down.”

Faron defended the teachers.

READ ALSO: Schoolgirl threatens teacher with knife as tensions rise in French schools

“There is no perfect solution,” he said.

But “we will analyse in depth what happened. If there are lessons to be taken from this, we will take them.”

The two girls hurt in the attack were discharged from hospital on Thursday evening with only light wounds.

Police have arrested the 30-year-old assailant, and a probe has been opened into “attempted murder of minors”, the prosecutor’s office said.

It was not immediately clear what had motivated him, but it did not appear to be “a terrorist act”, it said.

He was “psychiatrically fragile” and appeared to have stopped his medication.

The incident follows a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Thursday announced measures to crack down on teenage violence in and around schools.

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