On Monday, 1 April 2019, the prosecution in the ‘Air Cocaine’ case asked for sentences between four and 25 years against nine of the accused. For the French pilots Bruno Odos and Pascal Fauret, seven years was requested.
Marc Gouton, the prosecutor, also asked for the prohibition of all activities related to the aviation industry for the pilots, who were arrested in 2013 in the Dominican Republic for piloting a plane laden with 700 kilos of cocaine. The Dominican anti-drug agency confiscated the drugs at Punta Cana airport. They were inside the plane in 26 suitcases ready to take off for La Môle, near Saint-Tropez, on the southern coast of France.
Two weeks later, the two pilots and two passengers, Nicolas Pisapia and Alain Castany. were told to serve a year preventive custody and were then condemned to 20 years in jail in the Dominican Republic for drug trafficking.
However, in October 2015, the pilots, under house arrest awaiting their appeal, escaped and returned to France.
The highest penalty, that of 25 years, is requested for Ali Bouchareb, who is a known to be reoffending drug dealer, 12 years for the organizer of the flight, Frank Colin, and seven years for a colleague and head of the pilots, Fabrice Alcaud and Pierre-Marc Dreyfus.
The prosecution also asked for four years in jail for the custom’s accomplice, François-Xavier Manchet, who assisted at the airport in France where there were very lax security measures.
Fauret and Odos have always maintained they knew nothing about the drugs, but the prosecution in France state that they must have known what they were carrying.
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3 April 2019