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Brittany man tortured and dumped in shopping cart

A 21-year-old man was reportedly stabbed, tortured and raped before being dumped naked in a shopping trolley in the centre of a town in western France. The victim was rushed to hospital where he remains in a serious condition.

Published: 24 January 2013 09:14 CET

Brittany man tortured and dumped in shopping cart

Photo: Mike Coghlan

The young man was discovered in a supermarket trolley abandoned on a main street in the north-western French town of Bruz, near Rennes in Brittany at around 7am on Tuesday morning. When emergency services arrived, the victim was in a critical state and was immediately rushed to hospital.

According to French regional Ouest-France, preliminary reports suggested he had been stabbed, tortured, raped and badly beaten.

He remains in a serious condition in hospital, the newspaper reported.

Later that morning, police arrested three men, two of whom are youths, in an apartment close to the town of Bruz, on suspicion of being the "perpetrators of the attack", according to Rennes public prosecutor Thierry Pocquet du Haut-Jussé.

Five others including two women were arrested on suspicion of being complicit in the attack and for allegedly "failing to assist a person in danger", which is considered a serious crime in France.

The savage attack in the town of 18,000 inhabitants appears to have been a "crime of revenge", Pocquet du Haut-Juseé told French daily Le Parisien on Thursday.

All eight suspects were due to appear before the investigating judge on Thursday.

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French police search for gunmen after shootings in Paris suburb

Two men were shot dead near a cultural centre in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb, to the northeast of the French capital on Sunday evening, less than 48 hours after another fatal shooting nearby, according to authorities.

The victims of Sunday’s shooting were aged 35 and 31 and known for violence and drug trafficking, according to police sources.

One was shot in the head, with two suspects fleeing on foot, leaving the magazine of an automatic weapon and 18 spent bullet casings behind them.

The second man was hit six times.

The town of 52,000 people was on edge, mayor Stephane Blanchet told AFP, saying people were living in fear of another shooting.

“There is a huge feeling of fear, that it could start again and [that someone could be hit by] a stray bullet,” Blanchet said.

“If it had been a beautiful sunny day, there would have been more people outside,” when the latest shooting happened, he said.

In the first shooting, a 28-year-old man was killed on a nearby housing estate early on Saturday, with three others wounded.

In March, French President Emmanuel Macron announced an ‘XXL’ cleanup of drug trafficking in the southern port city of Marseille and other towns across France, including Sevran, where the drugs trade has been blamed for a spate of death and violence.

One drug dealing hotspot in Sevran was ‘eradicated’ in that operation, police said.

“We are aware that when we do that, we destabilise traffic, we create greed and sometimes there are clashes,” Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said on Sunday.

“But we will still continue,” he added.

Local La France insoumise MP Clementine Autain accused the government of abandoning some areas, and said the suburb, “did not have the police presence of other areas”.

Drug-related violence has often flared in Sevran – considered a hub of drug trafficking in France – with the then-mayor calling for UN peacekeepers to be deployed there in 2011.

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