Thief helps Paris police snare ‘Corsican gangster’

A man alleged to be one of Corsica's most notorious gangsters was behind bars on Friday after being arrested by chance thanks to a thief plying his trade on one of the poshest streets in Paris.

Published: 1 February 2013 18:04 CET

The 40-year-old, widely known as Rachid the Corsican, had parked his car on the Rue du Faubourg St Honore, famous for its designer boutiques and just up the road from President Francois Hollande's Elysee Palace.

Minutes after he had left the 4×4, police caught a thief trying to break into it red-handed, and what initially looked like a mundane crime took an unexpected twist when the officers discovered several guns in the vehicle.

The owner, who turned up shortly afterwards, was found to be carrying another gun and a search of his Paris flat produced more weapons, grenades, explosives and balaclavas.

The man and his partner, who runs a Corsican wine bar just off the Champs Elysees, were both detained in custody.

He has been charged with illegal possession of weapons and membership of a criminal gang, judicial sources said on Saturday.

Corsica, a spectacularly beautiful island with a population of just 300,000 people, has one of the highest murder rates in the developed world.

Last year alone there were 20 still unexplained homicides which have been linked to feuds between rival criminal clans in an underworld that is entwined with sections of the island's nationalist movement.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.