During his trip to Guyana, the French Head of State will meet those involved in the fight against illicit trafficking, of which there are many in this overseas territory. The Matouri river and nautical brigade has just been equipped with a new boat to hunt traffickers on a particularly exposed coastline between Suriname and Brazil.
2 mins
With our special correspondent in Cayenne,
“ There, we are in the mouth of the Mahury. Upstream, there is a lot of gold panning, a lot of logistics that pass through here “. Illegal gold panning is one of the trafficking activities that the Matouri river and nautical brigade is fighting against, of which Chief Warrant Officer Eddy P. is the commander. But it is not the only one: drug trafficking, arms trafficking, the arrival of illegal immigrants are part of their missions.
When they sail along the coasts of Guyana, Suriname on one side, Brazil on the other, the gendarmes of this team are on the lookout for any suspicious boats.
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Warrant Officer Benjamin P., who pilots the brigade’s new fast Zodiac, called Jaguar, slows down to observe a boat. “ It may look, from a distance, like this type of boat, what we are looking for… But here, they are fishermen. There are two of them at the front, they are pulling up a net. The boat looks empty. »
Spotting traffickers is not easy, because they are very organized, the chief warrant officer explains to us: “ They set up lookouts at mouths, on rivers, at crossroads on the road, to be able to identify and announce the different devices that are put in place. They are called doorbells. »
Sometimes, interventions are dangerous: a year ago, Major Arnaud Blanc was killed during an operation against illegal gold panning. The fight against all this trafficking is one of the challenges of Emmanuel Macron’s visit.
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