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French ex-police on trial accused of ‘shaking down’ Marseille drug dealers

Former police officers accused of stealing drugs, cash and cigarettes from criminals in the Marseille underworld went on trial Monday, with a prosecutor calling the alleged corruption a "cancer".

French ex-police on trial accused of 'shaking down' Marseille drug dealers
Illustration photo: Denis CHARLET / AFP

All but two of the 18 accused, aged between 37 and 60, were present at the trial’s opening when their lawyers predicted that the case against them would collapse quickly.

Prosecutors say the 18 engaged in shake-downs of drug dealers and resellers of smuggled cigarettes, taking cannabis, money and cartons of cigarettes.

Bringing the case in 2012, prosecutor Jacques Dallest said the officers “helped themselves to a share” of drug profits and that their unit, the BAC Nord, had been affected by the “cancer” of corruption.

The accusation’s case relies primarily on wiretaps, with one officer recorded as saying: “We now have a good little group going that knows how to stay silent. What is said in the car stays in the car.”

The recordings suggest that the officers often took thousands of euros in return for letting a suspect go free.

“Give us two bars (of cannabis) and we’ll leave you alone,” one said.

The officers have dismissed the recorded remarks, saying they had been “joking”.

The case features a witness for the prosecution, Karim Menacer, who accuses BAC Nord policemen of stealing from him.

Police found cocaine, cannabis and cash in banknotes with small denominations on Menacer when they stopped his car in August 2012.

Menacer says they then took €9,000 of the €36,000 he had in his car.

He was not present or represented by a lawyer, but the presiding judge read out a letter in which he claimed that he obtained the money by legal means.

Virgile Reynaud, a lawyer for three of the four officers accused of stealing from Menacer, denied that any theft had happened.

“Mr Menacer didn’t find the courage to show up in court. There’s nothing more to be said,” the lawyer said.

“The gangrene has turned into a hay fever,” said Alain Lhote, a lawyer for one of the accused, saying that between 67 and 70 percent of the wiretaps brought by the prosecution were inaudible.

Some of the accused admitted to occasional wrongdoing, with one admitting to keeping €540 “left behind” by a drug dealer.

Others said they passed confiscated cigarettes on to homeless people, or used the money they took to pay off confidential informants.

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CRIME

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

French authorities have uncovered a website for a fake recruitment drive purportedly seeking French volunteers to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, the defence ministry said on Thursday.

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

The site has now been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without elaborating.

The site had said that 200,000 French people were invited to “enlist in Ukraine”, with immigrants given priority.

A link to the site – that resembled the French army’s genuine recruitment portal – had been posted on X, formerly Twitter, the French defence ministry said.

“The site is a fake government site,” the ministry said, also on X, “and has been reposted by malevolent accounts as part of a disinformation campaign”.

The ministry did not say who they thought might be responsible. But a source close to the government told AFP initial evidence pointed to communications operations linked to Russian mercenary group Wagner.

“The accounts used and the technical data behind them, these are the people we know”, the source said.

“These people are still there and remain very focused on Ukraine. The subject of the French army is something that annoys them a lot.”

Separately, a government official speaking on condition of anonymity said the site bore “the hallmarks of a Russian or pro-Russian effort as part of a disinformation campaign claiming that the French army is preparing to send troops to Ukraine”.

French President Emmanuel Macron angered the Russian leadership last month by hardening his tone on the conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks he has refused to rule out sending ground troops and insisted that Europe has to do all that is necessary for a Russian defeat.

France has already accused Russia of waging a disinformation campaign against it.

The official told AFP that similar recent examples of disinformation posts included pictures of French army convoys wrongly presented as moving towards the Ukrainian border.

The fake website invited potential recruits to contact “unit commander Paul” for information about joining.

The defence ministry and government cyber units are investigating, ministry staff told AFP.

The French government has recently stepped up efforts to denounce and fight what it says are Russian disinformation and destabilisation campaigns aimed at undermining French public support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“Russia is asserting itself as the most aggressive player in the information field,” Marc-Antoine Brillant, the head of Viginum, an agency mandated to detect digital disinformation campaigns, said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.

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