The Périgueux Criminal Court sentenced three men aged 42, 33 and 32 this Friday, February 22. They were tried on an immediate remand, and were convicted of drug trafficking. The hearing lasted over four hours.
Supply everywhere in France
The facts date back to last October. The gendarmes of Sarlat are informed of drug trafficking in the terrassonnais and in particular in the parking lot of a bar-tabac in the town. The gendarmes set up surveillance and telephone tapping. For five months, they will study telephone conversations, the boundaries of telephones, and interview clients. They discover the existence of cocaine, heroin and cannabis trafficking, and identify three people. They were arrested and placed in police custody on March 8. During the searches, the gendarmes discovered 30g of cocaine, 20g of heroin and a gun in one, packaging bags in a shoebox in another. The demarcation of mobile phones reveals suspicious movements all over France: in Rouen, Angoulême, Corrèze, Marseille, Sète, or even Créteil. On the phones, photos and videos of narcotics, and discussions evoking transactions.
Consumers but not traffickers
At the hearing, the three defendants explained that they regularly consumed drugs. One explains that he sells 10g, 15g per week but denies any involvement in trafficking. “It was non-profit, only to make a profit from my personal consumption”. Sitting right next to him, the second defendant explains that he just did a few favors by transporting “things”, without wondering what it was, to make some money and buy presents for her daughter. The limitation of their telephones in the Paris region and everywhere in France is because they sell cars. In Belgium for example, it was to participate in a sale. “And when you stay half an hour at Rungis, what is it for?”asks the president. “For a car ma’am”replies the defendant. “Ah, you buy them at night, you cars?”, she smiles. Only the third defendant, a former robber convicted at the Assizes of Périgueux, indicates that he actually participated in trafficking. He was the one who interacted with the customers and carried out the transactions. “I had debts, I do not want to minimize my participation, I had a bullet in the head”, he explains. He specifies that he owed money to his suppliers, Lyonnais and Parisians.
“We are in the presence of three consumers, that’s for sure. You talk to me about sales to help out but we go from 10g, 20g, 70g and at one point you even talk about 100g!”, protests the prosecutor, addressing the first defendant. The wiretaps also show that one of the defendants owed a large sum of money to another. But for them, it’s a gray card story, which would not have been established in time. “We are not on a network, on something organized”adds one of the lawyers.
For the court, however, their guilt is beyond doubt, especially as they have all three were convicted several times. They were sentenced respectively to 18 months in prison, six of which were suspended for one, two years, of which one year was suspended for the other, and ten months as well as the revocation of a previous five-month suspended sentence for the third. . All three are being held in detention.