He announced his intention to surrender and he was heard. The alleged perpetrator of the shooting at a GIGN gendarme, killed during an operation against illegal gold panning at the end of March in Guyana, was arrested on Saturday, we learned from the Cayenne public prosecutor. The 20-year-old man of Brazilian nationality was arrested in the Guyanese forest.*
The alleged shooter was placed in judicial detention, before his appearance before the judge of freedoms and detention (JLD), who should place him under a warrant of committal. According to the first elements of the investigation, the suspect belonged to a group of robbers of clandestine gold mines, and was not himself a gold digger.
The victim, Arnaud Blanc, Chief Marshal of the Logis, was attacked during an operation intended to fight against illegal gold panning, the search for illegal gold, in Dorlin (Maripasoula region). The 35-year-old soldier was on a mission to this site in the center of this overseas territory, where this illegal activity is a source of significant pollution.
The already bereaved region
Accompanied by two other gendarmes from the GIGN, four army soldiers and a nurse, he had “been dropped off by helicopter in the forest in order to carry out an undercover operation for more than 2 days to reach a logistics base”. gold panners The group was taken to task by an armed gang. After exchanges of heavy fire, the gendarme had been shot. An investigation had been opened for murder in an organized gang.
After the announcement of his death, Emmanuel Macron had quickly expressed his “great emotion”, said the Elysee. The Head of State “salutes the courage and the memory of this non-commissioned officer, fallen under fire, engaged since 2009 within the national gendarmerie and who served at the GIGN antenna in Cayenne since 2019”.
In 2012, two soldiers had already been killed and two gendarmes seriously injured by bullets during a joint army/gendarmerie operation against illegal gold diggers in Guyana, already at the Dorlin site. In 2019, three soldiers lost their lives during an intervention on an illegal gold mining site in the Maripasoula region.