On the run for 32 years, a man sentenced to murder committed in Marseille was finally located in Spain, thanks to the investigations of a small unit of the Lyon police specializing in the search for fugitives.
Husband having killed their wife, drug trafficker, little Caïd: since its creation in 2024, the research group of fleeing individuals (Grif) in Lyon has located more than 40 criminals, mostly condemned in their absence, which hid until Indonesia, explain its investigators to AFP. Their last blow, revealed by the regional daily Le Progrès, concluded in Figueras, Catalonia, where they found a sixty -something, condemned for having killed more than 50 stabs a man in a Marseille bar in 1993.
Quickly suspected, he fled and the Aix Assize Court had pronounced a sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment in absentia. For decades, he remained outside the radars, despite the issue of a European arrest warrant. Recently police learned that he was imprisoned in a Spanish prison under a false identity, for drug trafficking. By taking an interest in his relatives, the Grif understood that his sister sent mandates near Figueras and that his brothers went there. On July 2, the Spanish police notified him of the existence of the arrest warrant, so that he was given to France within 90 days.
“He lived under a false identity and had created societies”
Among the files resolved by the Grif, this man has remained the longest on the run. But his investigators also got hold of a fugitive, which remained green for 17 years after violence by firearms, which they found in Saint-Tropez, six months before the prescription of the facts. “”We went back to him thanks to his account on the Snapchat social network and following his partner. He lived under a false identity and had even created societies“, notes a member of this cell.
The Grif, set up during the reform of the national police, is a declination of the National Fugitive Research Brigade, created in 2003 and which notably enabled the arrest of “king of the beautiful“, Rédoine Faïd. His territorial jurisdiction is theoretically linked to that of the Tribunal de Lyon and his specialized interregional jurisdiction (Jirs), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, but the movements of people on the run also bring them affairs.
And “little guy“Wanted for drug trafficking for four years in Metz was thus located in Lyon, where he had come to have false papers with the complicity of a municipal employee.”Fugitives often grill by asking for papers, as they must provide an identity photo and facial recognition tools even identify them for years after“, Record the investigators.
The Grif also intervened to stop a Belgian located in the two Alps, in Isère. Sentenced and detained for the murder of his wife, he had fled during an exit permission. Even if he changed his job every two months, he worked under his true identity, which betrayed him. The three investigators from the Lyon cell are currently in charge of about fifteen files each, many linked to narcotics, because “traffickers have money to go far“.
They might have much more. “”The number of people sought is infinite, even if the number of those that are actively looking for is tightened. We must establish priorities“With the severity of the crimes and the date of prescription as cursors, they explain. If they are satisfied with their assessment, a file remains a source of frustration: they have succeeded in locating a man sentenced to family violence, who left for Bali, but for lack of extradition agreement with Indonesia, he remains free.