Five residents of the independence stronghold of the Saint-Louis tribe, in New Caledonia, were charged and detained, the prosecutor’s office announced on Friday, October 4. Wanted for abuse, they went to the gendarmerie.
“The five people domiciled in the Saint-Louis tribe who appeared before the gendarmerie on Monday as part of the ongoing investigations were charged and placed in preventive detention”Nouméa deputy prosecutor Hélène Gaudet said in a press release.
Three of them are accused of “Attempted murder by an organized gang and complicity in attempted murder of police officers” AND “participation in criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime”. The other two must answer to the heads of “armed robberies due to the commission of several vehicle thefts, and in one of them the destruction by fire of certain vehicles”according to the press release.
Saint-Louis isolated from the world
Saint-Louis, south of Noumea, is isolated from the world by a double roadblock installed by the gendarmerie on the section of the road that crosses the tribe, after vehicle thefts and shots fired at the police. Precisely in this tribe, in the municipality of Mont-Dore, a gendarme was murdered by a shot to the head in May, shortly after the start of the unrest that affected the archipelago.
On September 19, two young men were killed there by the police during a gendarmerie operation. Traditional leaders have since engaged in mediation with these youths to try to convince them to surrender. In addition to the five defendants, a sixth wanted resident turned himself in on Tuesday.
