Affaire Dupont de Ligonnès: polices française et écossaise se renvoient la responsabilité
How could a man unknown to the police be mistaken for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, suspected of having killed his family in 2011 in Nantes? Since Saturday, the Scottish and French police have been passing the buck.
How could a man, living in Limay in the Yvelines, be arrested in Glasgow, placed in detention and taken for Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, suspected of having killed his wife and four children in 2011 in Nantes? This is the issue that has been causing tension between the French and Scottish authorities since Saturday. Police in both countries are blaming each other for this error.
On Friday of the same day, information from the Scottish authorities reached the French authorities: Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is preparing to take a plane from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport to Glasgow. Arriving too late, the French police officers asked their counterparts in Scotland to arrest him. They perform and carry out the first digital comparisons.
The answer arrives and is confirmed four times by the Scottish police, according to a source close to the investigation to BFMTV. Between 7pm and 7.30pm, by text message or telephone, the French police officers, in this case the BNRF, the Brigade nationale de recherche des fugitives, are alerted by their counterparts that the prints "match". It is Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès. It is too late for the French police to go to Scotland, and investigations will be conducted in France. The man's home, located in Limay in the Yvelines, was searched.
The French police officers ask their Scottish colleagues to send them the fingerprints of the man arrested in order to compare them with the equipment found during the searches of his accommodation. In vain. At this time, however, French investigators already have serious doubts about the identity of the man arrested in Glasgow. The searches, the neighborhood inquiry in Limay, or the requests made to the Tax Department... Not a single evidence matches between this man and the father of a family wanted since 2011.
Doubts are mounting, police officers are reviewing the video surveillance footage from Roissy Airport until late. The man reported does not look anything like Dupont de Ligonnès. It's 8:30 p. m., information starts to flow. The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police, responsible for the National Brigade for the Search for Fugitives, urges the Nantes Judicial Police to call on the prosecutor to take the floor. He is then the only one authorized to give information on the proceedings in progress "in order to avoid the propagation of fragmented or inaccurate information or to put an end to a disturbance of public order", according to article 11 of the Criminal Code.
It is 12:20 a.m. when the prosecutor of Nantes, Pierre Sennès, takes the floor. In a brief statement, the prosecutor's representative called for "caution" and announced that checks would be carried out in Scotland by French police officers "to ensure that it was indeed Mr Dupont de Ligonnès". Except that, according to a source close to the investigation, on Friday at 11 p.m., the Scots are retracting their information. An Interpol message is sent: Scottish police indicate that the DNA of the man who has just been arrested does not match the DNA of the man in the "Red Notice".
Indeed, when an international arrest warrant is issued, "Red Notices", alert messages, with all the information the authorities have on the fugitive, are sent by Interpol. But the Scots still have a doubt: they could only compare nine out of ten prints, the man who had just been arrested having one finger missing, the right index finger. But in the analyses, the left index is used as a reference. On the night of Friday to Saturday, the confirmation was received: the man in detention was not Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, there were almost no common characteristics between the two men. The man arrested in Glasgow was released late Saturday afternoon.
On Monday evening, the Scottish police commented on the case: they claimed that they had "never confirmed, either in public or in private, that the man arrested at Glasgow Airport was Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès "because it was never known for certain."
BBM
So, the Scottish police informs the French that XDdL is travelling from Roissy in France to Scotland, they arrest him on arrival. Next, they never confirm that the man arrested actually is XDdL, that is why the French believe the Scots confirmed this four times, all while the French, after a blitz investigation at his home, did not believe it was him.
Runour has it that during WWII, the British misled the Germans by having the English officials speak to one another on the phone in French. The Germans lost the war.
