Raid in the case of the robbery of the armored van committed mid-January in Germany. According to sources close to the investigation, eight people were taken into custody on Tuesday and Wednesday in France. Four of them, including the alleged mastermind, were arrested Tuesday in the Pyrénées-Orientales near the French-Spanish border. The other four were arrested in the North and Île-de-France, said these sources, confirming information from Le Parisien.

They are questioned by police officers from the Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime (OCLCO), who are seized of the investigation. Among them, Gemal D., presented by Le Parisien as "a 58-year-old kingpin" from Roubaix, is "probably" the organizer of the attack, according to one of the sources close to the investigation.

Ten suspects indicted

So far, 860,000 euros had been recovered during previous waves of arrests out of the total loot of 2.1 million euros estimated by the German police. The rest of the loot has not yet been found at the end of this new police operation, "even if we have found some money" which is not known if it comes from the attack, according to one of the sources close to the investigation.

In total, ten suspects are already indicted and imprisoned in this judicial investigation opened for robbery in an organized gang with weapon, destruction by dangerous means and criminal association, in the hands of an investigating judge of the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction of Paris.

Two convictions

Five suspects aged between 45 and 56 were arrested in the Paris region a few hours after the robbery. Among them are Abdelkrim Lho and Loïc Delière, known to belong to the French organized crime and to be close to the robber Antonio Ferrara, had indicated at the time of their arrest a source close to the case.

They had been sentenced respectively to 22 and 20 years' imprisonment with a security sentence for the robbery of a cash-in-transit van in 2000 in Nanterre, which had cost the life of a conveyor. Five other suspects, including a woman, were arrested in January and February.

On the morning of January 13, a commando of at least five heavily armed people attacked a cash-in-transit van in Saarlouis, a German town bordering the France. One of the occupants of the van and a police officer were injured. Explosions and gunfire were heard during the attack, according to German daily Bild. The criminals fled in several vehicles and shot at a German police patrol who chased them.

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