A very important operation to dismantle a Franco-Brazilian criminal organization was carried out on Friday in Guyana with the arrest of eleven people, including the leader of this group, announced the public prosecutor Yves Le Clair during a conference. Press. This dragnet, carried out by 200 gendarmes on “7 to 8 sites” on the island of Cayenne (Cayenne, Remire-Montjoly, Matoury) was welcomed by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, in a tweet published this Saturday .
The group arrested, men aged 20 to 30, includes some French people but especially Brazilians, we learned from a source familiar with the matter. A judicial investigation for criminal association has been opened, said the prosecutor. The defendants were indeed seen during surveillance operations with weapons, bulletproof vests and “other elements preparatory to offenses” allowing to characterize the association of criminals, he added. Their custody can last up to 96 hours.
“The main target has been arrested”
On Friday evening, ten people were arrested and taken into custody. An eleventh person joined them on Saturday, AFP learned from the commander of the Guyana gendarmerie, General Jean-Christophe Sintive. In his tweet, the minister clarified that this group was suspected “in particular of having prepared armed robberies”. During his press conference, the public prosecutor, who rarely speaks, said that “the main target has been arrested”. He referred to a “criminal organization of South American inspiration”.
General Sintive explained to AFP that the operation carried out on Friday was “out of the ordinary” with the mobilization of “200 gendarmes, including teams from the GIGN and squadrons of mobile gendarmes”, who acted simultaneously to achieve these arrests. He argued that the investigators had been working on this group for a year and a half, but that the reinforcements that came from mainland France three months ago, in particular the “judicial police task force”, had made it possible to give a boost to investigation.
The prosecutor has already warned that he would require the imprisonment of the defendants at the end of their police custody. Attracted by the gold panning activity, several years ago, criminal groups from Brazil gradually settled in Guyana, such as the Comando Vermelho or the Familia Terror do Amapa (FTA) faction.