Five people, including a 14-year-old minor, were arrested in Guadeloupe after “four months of investigation” into the attack on a gendarmerie and looting in November in the town of Lamentin, a-t- we learned from judicial sources.
These people were “presented to the examining magistrate” with a view to an indictment for “aggravated willful violence”, “degradation in an organized gang” and “organized theft”, said this source on Friday evening.
Four young people aged 20 to 30, and a minor
These arrests follow the attack on a police station and the looting of a business and a school in November in Lamentin, when urban violence, blockages and social crisis broke out in Guadeloupe against the health pass and the obligation vaccine.
The investigation, “conducted on rogatory commission”, led “to the arrest of eight individuals at the beginning of the week and the presentation of five individuals at the end of 48 hours of police custody”, Friday evening, including four were to be presented “with a view to placement in pre-trial detention”, declared to AFP Patrick Desjardins, public prosecutor in Pointe-à-Pitre.
They are four “young people between 20 and 30 years old” and “a 14-year-old minor”, all from Lamentin, he said. The suspects are “indicted for willful violence in a meeting on persons holding public authority, degradation in an organized gang by dangerous means, in a meeting, with the use of a weapon and on persons holding public authority, and organized thefts “, detailed the prosecutor.
“Premeditated” attack
The facts had taken place “in two stages between November 17 and 19, 2021, at the very start of the riots, on the same evenings as the attack on customs, or jewelry stores” (other violence committed in Pointe-à-Pitre and causing under investigation), he recalled.
After stones were thrown, in particular on November 17, against a gendarmerie car, injuring gendarmes, “about fifty” people attacked the gendarmerie building the next day, where “five individuals” had “managed to enter”, before to be put to flight by “two gendarmes present” inside. That evening, there were “several Molotov cocktail jets”, even igniting trees, noted the prosecutor.
This attack was “premeditated because we now know that the day before”, the assailants “had packaged, in a building next to the gendarmerie, Molotov cocktails ready to be used”, he reported. “They were quite determined to take possession of the premises and possibly bring weapons,” he added. “This case shows that from the first minute of the urban violence in November, everything was organized,” he said.