Police blotter

12 February : 2 twenty somethings are arrested for kidnapping the mother and brother of French rapper 'Booba' [Ed. - somewhere in a shithole suburb of Paris].
13 February : A 49 year old man in Montrouge [Ed. - suburb of Paris] is discovered dead on his bed. His hands and feet are bound and his mouth id stuffed full of neckties.
15 February : A 30 year old Asian women, gagged and blindfolded with masking tape, is thrown from the 3rd floor of an apartment in La Courneuve [Ed. - a true shithole suburb of Paris].
16 February : Doctors, dentists, and nurses demonstrate in Vénissieux [Ed. - suburb of Lyon known for Islamic extremism; at least one of its residents wound up at Gitmo] against repeated muggings and robberies (3 since December).
16 February : A man is shot and killed in his car when he stops at a red light in the suburbs of Montpellier.
17 February : A black BMW stops in front of a jewelry store in central Marseille. The driver gets out and uses a traffic barrier to bash through the storefront. An accomplice, wearing a ski mask, uses a rifle to kill the store owner by shooting him in the head. The attackers flee without robbing any jewelry. Marseille police state that this is the third attack of this kind in the last month.
18 February : 2 people are arrested in Lagny [Ed. - need I repeat, shithole suburb of Paris] for kidnapping a 22 year old man 3 days earlier. The victim is beaten and robbed of several hundred Euros. Police put it down to violence between Zaire gangs.
18 February : A man wearing a ski mask bursts into a supermarket in Yerres. He fires several pistol shots in the air, hits 2 employees and douses them with gasoline and threatens to set them on fire if they do not open the safe. He gets away with 26000 Euros.

Source : Marianne magazine no. 462, 25 February