On January 14, 2021, a week after the disappearance of a forty-year-old wanted by the judicial police, the gendarmes discovered a charred body in a Peugeot Berlingo in the countryside of Bellegarde (Gard), a village located a dozen km from Nîmes. Nicolas Bessone, the new public prosecutor of Marseille, confirms that the investigation is still underway at the specialized interregional jurisdiction.
It had been about a week since a forty-year-old from Nîmes had been reported missing by his family since January 6 or 7, 2021. The man had been the subject of an investigation for a worrying disappearance and checks had been launched – in vain – to try to locate it. Then the case rebounded on Thursday January 14, 2021 when the gendarmes discovered a burned vehicle in the Bellegarde countryside near an industrial structure.
Very quickly, the investigators cross-reference the case of the disturbing disappearance and the macabre discovery. But as the drug trafficking war rages on and gunshot deaths keep coming, investigators prefer to remain cautious before evoking a particular lead.
Caution also adopted by prosecutor Maurel who prefers to wait for the results of DNA samples before favoring a lead. The Nîmes public prosecutor’s office then opened a judicial investigation for kidnapping, sequestration and criminal conspiracy to be able to give a legal framework to the case. The Nîmes branch of the SRPJ in Montpellier is responsible for the rogatory commission entrusted to an investigating judge from Nîmes.
DNA analyzes confirm identity
The gendarmes from the research section therefore carried out the usual findings, assisted by criminal identification technicians and took a multitude of samples from the burned car and around the scene of the vehicle fire (Peugeot Berlingot). A team from the forensic medicine unit of Doctor Benslima’s university hospital carries out the lifting of the victim’s body. It was a corpse particularly degraded by the flames.
On January 14, 2021, the gendarmes were alerted to the discovery of a burned vehicle in the Bellegarde countryside. HOCINE ROUAGDIA ARCHIVES
Troubles with traffickers
Finally, everything accelerates with the results of the biological samples which confirm the identity of Farid D. who had not given any sign of life for about a week, leaving his family in great concern.
The Nîmes public prosecutor’s office then decided to have both the judicial police and the military from the Nîmes research section who had already advanced their investigations and the profile of the possible victim, already targeted by an attempt, work on the investigation. assassination in January 2015 not far from his home. The man would have had problems with traffickers in the Marseille region against a backdrop of disputes linked to drug drilling (a theft, Editor’s note). And, if six years earlier, the man miraculously escaped assassination, this is not the case in January 2021.
The Nîmes University Hospital forensic medicine unit mobilized. HOCINE ROUAGDIA
Fire scene filmed by video surveillance
According to the elements of the case, the victim would have been lured into an ambush by a man he knew and would have gone to a meeting without necessarily knowing that other people were waiting for him there. At this stage of the case, there is nothing to confirm that the murder was committed in Bellegarde. The mere presence of the burned car with the charred body does not allow us to confirm this.
The scene of the fire of the vehicle in which the body of Farid D. was discovered ARCHIVES HOCINE ROUAGDIA
However, the victim’s corpse was indeed burned in the Bellegarde countryside. According to our information, part of the fire scene was filmed by the video surveillance system and we would see the criminals pouring gasoline over several meters to create a trail of fuel and light the fire from a certain distance in the car. The scene takes place at night and shows a certain determination in the action of the criminals.
Since January 2021, gendarmes and police officers from the Marseille PJ have collected numerous elements which made it possible to feed the file of the investigating judge of the specialized interregional jurisdiction (Jirs) in charge of the case as, moreover, others assassination files from Nîmes perpetrated against a backdrop of the war of narco-banditism.
Nicolas Bessone, public prosecutor: “the judicial investigation continues”
Questioned recently, Nicolas Bessone, the new public prosecutor of Marseille, clarified some procedural points but for the purposes of the investigation did not reveal any elements of the file. The magistrate notes “that the judicial investigation continues” and “that at this stage no one is indicted in the case”. He added that the case was active but was not able to comment further “at the risk of harming the ongoing investigations”.
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