“In recent years, clashes between Chechens and other communities, mainly of North African origin, have grown. A confidential note from the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) dated this Tuesday illustrates the phenomenon observed this weekend in Dijon. It only took a few words published on Facebook for the Chechen community to succeed in mobilizing more than a hundred big guys and putting a quarter of Dijon (Côte-d’Or) under control under the impotent gaze of authorities.
“They could have been 200 more if the organizers had not put an end to it,” blows a police source. However, there are only ten of them living in Dijon. A show of force that highlights the mobilization capacity of this community to help one of its own.
Friday, to avenge a 19-year-old boy beaten up, the community gathered men from the Côte d’Azur, Strasbourg, Troyes, but also from Belgium or Germany. Already in April, around fifty Chechens had led a punitive expedition to a migrant home after a simple fight on the sidelines of a football match.
Members of criminal organizations
“These conflicts very often fall within the domain of honor or result from clandestine issues against the background of a gray economy”, summarizes this note, called “green”, from Sirasco, the criminal intelligence service of the national police. Thus, if the motivation of the men who came to Dijon to fight it does not seem to be linked to any settlement of accounts on funds of territorial war or traffic, the latter are not for all that simple people anxious to protect their compatriots. Most are “members of criminal organizations,” according to a source familiar with the matter.
VIDEO. Dijon: scenes of violence following a punitive expedition led by Chechens
Since Tuesday, specialized police officers from the Central Office for Combating Organized Crime (OCLCO) have also taken over the Dijon investigation. In fact, for several years, “Chechen criminal networks have been investigating a wide range of offenses,” write analysts at Sirasco in the note. The police also note that “the demonstrations of force of these criminal groups are more and more frequent on the territory and evolve towards unprecedented violence”. If “honor” is often at stake, the multiplication of conflicts is also explained by the widening of the criminal activities of the Chechens.
Historically, the fields of security and construction have been particularly invested by these men who fled the war in their country. In Alsace and in the south of France, “the members of the Chechen networks notably imposed themselves as security agents in the middle of the night, held mainly by traditional banditry,” explains the same “green” note from the PJ. In this area of activity, they gradually managed to oust by force (aggravated violence, extortion) from competition and to develop their own activities. “
Chechens known for belonging to the independence movement
Thanks to this significant financial windfall, they have gradually evolved into other criminal sectors. In April 2020, a double homicide attempt involving Chechen nationals took place in particular on the Côte d’Azur. Behind these facts, “drug trafficking in a sensitive city of Nice”. In a few years, the Chechens have also managed to “establish themselves in the district of Surville-de-Montereau-Fault-Yonne (77) and to impose themselves by force, threats and intimidation on the inhabitants and local traffickers “, Emphasizes the document of the PJ.
