Robert Hendy-Freegard, also known as David Hendy, 51, was placed in detention on Thursday, where the examining magistrate in charge of the case in Limoges indicted him on the count of “attempted murder on people agents of public authority. »
This Briton had been arrested in early September in Belgium, where he had fled, while he was wanted for having overthrown two gendarmes in the Creuse, at the end of August. The Belgian authorities had handed him over to their French counterparts on Monday, after he had exhausted all his appeals.
This British crook had hit the headlines after his escape. The individual, well known in Great Britain, has indeed inspired a documentary, “The Puppetmaster: lessons in manipulation”, and a film, fiction “Rogue Agent”, both broadcast on Netflix.
He had hit two soldiers while fleeing
Arrested on September 2 in Grand-Bigard near Brussels, he is suspected of having deliberately overturned two gendarmes with his car, on August 25, during an inspection of his dog breeding in Vidaillat (Creuse), where he lived. When the gendarmes asked him to go to the nearest brigade, he started his vehicle and then hit the soldiers while fleeing.
In 2005, he was sentenced in his country to life imprisonment for kidnapping, deception, theft from students and women, from whom he had extracted more than a million pounds, in particular by posing as a spy for the MI5, the British internal intelligence service. He was released in 2009 after his conviction for kidnapping was overturned by an appeals court.