It aroused the shock and wonder of family and friends of a 54-year-old truck driver from the Aarhus area, as via the French media knew that the man had received a sentence of eight years in prison in the south of France.
the Driver had gotten a job driving a truck with oranges and lemons from Malaga, Spain to Denmark in the end of February. After he had crossed the border to France, he was stopped by customs on the 26. February, in follow the French media revealed the 987 kilos of marijuana hidden in the cargo.
the lorry driver has denied the guilty, and his French lawyer has previously stated that he refuses to be known to the load.
During a court hearing at the court in Perpignan got the dane 8. march, a week after the arrest, a sentence: Eight years in prison. The judgment is appealed.
The lightning-fast judicial cases a week wondering why the family of the driver.
the Dane’s French lawyer, Catherine Barrere, explains here the legal process through the Danish Bettina Monsonego-Meineche, who himself is a lawyer in France.
She reports that the dane was convicted under a special fast-track procedure, which is called ‘comparution immédiate’., where the accused be brought before a judge at the expiry of the remand in order to be judged.
It is the French public prosecution service, which decides to apply the procedure, and Catherine Barrere inform that it is established practice in the local court to apply the procedure in cases of drug trafficking across the border between Spain and France, when a person is taken in flagrante delicto.
But this is the case is not over. The judgment is appealed, and the appellate court must decide the matter within 4 months.
Neither the lorry driver or his family at home in French. His partner for 11 years, Gitte says that she has been in contact with the 54-year-old imprisoned man a single time during a few minutes long phone conversation. It was immediately after the arrest back in February.
She has received a single letter from him and sent several letters and a package with clothes, and she has posted a lot of documentation in the hopes that there soon may be a phone contact to the imprisoned man in France.
– It is a deeply frustrating time, ” she says, and stresses that she does not for a second think that the 54-year-old have known that there was marijuana in the truck, he rode with.
the foreign ministry’s Citizen service has previously opposite Ekstra Bladet confirmed that a Danish citizen imprisoned in France.
