Investigations are progressing. A total of five people have been indicted and imprisoned in the investigation into the murder of a man found charred in a wood near Besançon in early March. Three people were indicted and placed in pre-trial detention on Thursday, announced Thursday the prosecutor of the Republic Etienne Manteaux at a press briefing. At the end of March, two other suspects had already been arrested in the neighboring department of Haute-Saône in connection with this case. Of these, four are from the Traveller community.

The fifth is a thirty-year-old whose identity is not clearly established and who is nicknamed "Tix", said the prosecutor. Arrested in Marseille at the end of March and already indicted for the murder in Besançon at the end of February of Abdelkader Mesref, a 51-year-old man convicted three times for criminal association, was according to the investigation, present in the Besançon apartment where the victim found burned was sequestered, said the prosecutor. Heard Wednesday in this last case, "Tix" remained silent and was indicted for murder, kidnapping, criminal association in connection with drug trafficking, according to Etienne Manteaux.

GPS tag

The indictments announced Thursday were able to intervene thanks to the investigations of the investigation cell of the research section of the national gendarmerie, which was able to determine the existence of a GPS beacon on a loan vehicle found burned in the commune of Pirey, near Besançon, revealed the prosecutor.

According to investigators, the criminals first sequestered the victim in an apartment in Besançon. Another person, still missing and whose DNA was found in the same apartment, was also sequestered there, he said, which tends to confirm the links, until then supposed, between these two cases. The autopsy revealed that the victim had been murdered by a bullet to the head and his body burned with at least 40 liters of gasoline, the prosecutor said. With extensive criminal records, the defendants deny the facts. "Their phones are ringing on the spot, but they don't understand!" he said.

  • Justice
  • Inquiry
  • Franche-Comté
  • Murder