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 April 8. The man, aged 20 and of Brazilian nationality, was arrested in the afternoon by the GIGN in the Guyanese forest, after having announced his intention to surrender, said the public prosecutor of Cayenne, Yves Le Clair at Agence France-Presse.
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 GIGN gendarme, Arnaud Blanc, 35, died on March 25 while participating in an operation against illegal gold panning on the clandestine site of Dorlin, in the heart of Guyana, not far from Maripasoula. The alleged shooter remained “in the area,” Le Clair said.
The gendarme had been helicoptered with nine comrades to the heart of the Guyanese jungle in order to reach the Dorlin site by surprise. The group had been taken to task by an armed band. After exchanges of heavy fire, the gendarme, gendarmerie non-commissioned officer of the GIGN Cayenne branch since 2019, had been shot. An investigation had been opened by the Cayenne prosecution for murder in an organized gang.
Regular dismantling operations
This arrest comes eight days after the tribute paid on March 31 by Emmanuel Macron to gendarme Arnaud Blanc, pacsé and father of two children, on the basis of the GIGN of Versailles-Satory (Yvelines).
“The one nicknamed ‘Blanca’ had the soul of a soldier of France, smiling and free,” said the head of state in front of his gendarme’s coffin. This “sniper, driver of armored vehicles, confirmed rescuer, expert in canoes” had made a commitment to “protect everyone as a bulwark of the law, as a soldier of the law until the end”, added Emmanuel Macron.
This is not the first time such a tragedy has occurred. In 2012, two soldiers were killed and two gendarmes seriously injured by bullets during a joint operation by the army and the gendarmerie against illegal gold diggers in Guyana, already at the Dorlin site. Since 2010, the army has also been bereaved in the context of this fight by several accidental deaths.
The army and the gendarmerie regularly carry out major operations to dismantle illegal gold panning sites as part of the Harpie mission, launched in 2008 by Nicolas Sarkozy, then head of state.
From late October to early December 2022, up to 500 soldiers were mobilized for seven weeks to “neutralize” the main clandestine gold mining sites. Fifty tons of equipment and various foodstuffs, 30,000 liters of fuel, 12 km of construction pipes, six crushers, 90 generators, 37 quads, 15 canoes and their engines had been seized. That is a financial loss of around 4 million euros, according to the prefecture, for the garimpeiros (a term designating illegal Brazilian gold miners in Guyana).
Some 500 illegal gold mining sites still active
According to figures from a parliamentary report published in July 2021, the French Guiana gendarmerie estimates the number of illegal minors at around 8,600, most of them “in an irregular situation on the territory”. Some 500 illegal gold mining sites are still active, according to the Observatory of Mining Activity (OAM), including 150 located in the heart of the Amazon National Park, created in 2007 to protect the Amazon rainforest and its biodiversity.
In 2022, the French authorities carried out more than 1,000 patrols in the forest against illegal gold panning, seizing 59 kilos of mercury and 5 kilos of gold, according to a report from the prefecture.
In addition to the difficulties encountered in penetrating the Amazonian forest, the fight against this phenomenon is complicated by its cross-border nature, the gold miners operating on either side of the Oyapock and Maroni rivers, borders between the French department and, respectively, Brazil and Suriname.