This was announced by the public prosecutor’s office in Lyon, five days after the release of the hostage by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN). The seven suspects have been placed in preventive detention.
The victim, in his 20s, had been kidnapped in a place and under circumstances that were not disclosed. The kidnap ordeal lasted from 28 to 31 August, before being ended by the elite unit of the French gendarmerie near the railway station of Valence, in the department of Drôme.
Last Saturday, the gendarmerie had been informed that a Swiss citizen, who – according to a source close to the case – had cryptocurrencies, had been taken hostage in France by kidnappers who demanded ‘the payment of a ransom in cryptocurrency for his release’, the public prosecutor’s office had indicated.
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Several people in custody after Swiss national kidnapped in France
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Seven people are in French police custody as authorities investigate the kidnapping and illegal detention of a young Swiss man, who was freed on Sunday.
At the end of a rapid investigation and an operation involving some 150 gendarmes, an initial raid by the GIGN led to the arrest of the main suspect and two other people as well as the release of the hostage. Subsequently, four more people were arrested in a second operation on Sunday.
The seven people, including a 17-year-old minor, were indicted and placed in preventive detention at the end of their appearance yesterday before Lyon magistrates, the prosecutor’s office told AFP news agency today, without specifying the charges.
The suspects have been questioned on charges of kidnapping and extortion in association with a criminal organisation using weapons, the prosecutor’s office had specified.
Kidnappings for the purpose of extortion or attempted kidnappings linked to cryptocurrencies, sometimes spectacularly, have seen an upsurge in recent months in France.
Translated from Italian with DeepL/mga
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