A police car comes out of the police station of the North division of the DDSP in Marseille – BORIS HORVAT / AFP
- This Monday opens the eagerly awaited trial of the Bac Nord de Marseille.
- Eighteen police officers accused of having extorted delinquents on the sidelines of intervention in the northern districts appear in court.
The words of Jacques Dallest, then prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille, slam in the small room of the criminal court of the Marseille city. “Gangrene struck the North Bac”. On this day of November 2012, the audience of journalists invited to this press conference is provided, up to the impact caused by this incredible affair.
A rumor then broke in Marseille: that the police officers of the North Bac would in reality be real scoundrels, accused of extorting dealers of their goods or their money. “These police officers are numerous to be in what I consider to be an organized system of theft, racketeering, drug trafficking,” says the prosecutor.
Dissolution of the North Bac
The investigation quickly turned into a national scandal, to the point that the Minister of the Interior at the time, Manuel Valls, ordered the dissolution of the Bac Nord de Marseille. Almost ten years later, this same scandal will be examined from Monday before the Marseille Criminal Court. No less than eighteen former “baceux” of the northern districts appear, accused in particular of aggravated theft.
“Each operation” of the three groups of the North Bac in question had become “a pretext, either to the attribution of products with a view to a possible remuneration of unofficial informants, or to a personal enrichment”, according to the instruction. In support of these accusations, hours of conversations intercepted on the telephone, or in the offices and the six cars of the Bac which had been sounded in 2012. The investigators also found cash, jewelry and products. narcotics in the locker rooms as well as in the false ceilings of the police station.
“From gangrene to hay fever”
Only a part of the defendants partially acknowledged the facts. “We went from gangrene to hay fever, tackle Me Alain Lhote, lawyer for one of the defendants. If errors, negligence were committed, they were made with a hierarchy which has considerably closed its eyes. And this was not a criminal offense but rather an ethical one. We must forget the modesty of gazelle. My client was familiar with the practice of taking a piece of cannabis and giving it to an informer. This is how we also have great business! “
“There was undoubtedly an administrative fault, which earned my client a visit to the disciplinary board, recalls Me Monneret. But when you work at the baccalaureate, you are not litigators. We are there to make interpellations, pressed by the culture of the number. No reports on seizures. “
“Two or three bullshit”
“This case is both simple and complicated,” says Me Dominique Ramirez, also a defense lawyer. The then minister had banged his fist on the table. For two or three bullshit from a few members of the Bac, he burned the whole brigade. But once we found reason, 90% of them were reinstated. “Many lawyers plan to plead the release in a case that they consider flawed.
“The case has completely deflated, says Me Virgile Reynaud, lawyer for several of these defendants. There has been no evidence of personal enrichment, for example. On the listening, the second listening, for some defendants, the content has been changed by nearly 75%. The parquet made easy shortcuts, because in Marseille, people don’t like stories, and you had to find a sardine to stop up the Old Port. “
The investigating magistrate did indeed finally not retain the aggravating circumstance of “organized band”, and abandoned the proceedings for “willful violence”. The trial is scheduled to last ten days.