Security Services Record Half A Million Crimes In 2020

The investigations of the national gendarmerie revealed that the cities of the western border strip become the transit area par excellence for Moroccan drugs and that the traffickers use animals like camels and donkeys at the level of narrow and rugged paths, or by smugglers who monitor the movements of border guards and provide the Moroccan drug’s mafia with all the information related to the pathway and its security situation.

In this context, Colonel Mounir Marouche, head of the Judicial Police Department led by the National Gendarmerie, told Echorouk that the cities that witnessed a record trend of drug seizures are “Tlemcen, Al-Bayadh, Naama and Bechar”, which are bordering the border strip with Morocco, and that drug trafficking cells are using all the methods to flood Algeria with cannabis using camels, vehicles and people whose task is to monitor border guards movements.

In the language of the figures shown by Colonel Marouche during his presentation of the annual outcome of the national gendarmerie activity, the gendarmerie authorities registered 6,611 drug cases that resulted in the arrest of 9,770 people, with the seizure of 62,994 tons of treated cannabis, 114 bushes of the cannabis plant, in addition to 11,587 kg of cocaine.

In detailing the outcome of the judicial police for the year 2020, the security officer explained that the National Gendarmerie units recorded 522,272 crimes, which involved 522,752 people, and 374 murders and attempted deliberate killings were examined, which resulted in the death of 169 people, and more than 17.000 cases related to organized crime resulted in the arrest of 31.526 people.

According to Colonel Marouche, the gendarmerie services arrested 1,185 counterfeiters in various fields of crime, including counterfeiting currency and falsifying administrative and cars’ documents, during which 628 were dealt with, and a considerable number of forged scraps of national and foreign currency were seized, while 3,435 cases related to illegal arms trade were recorded. 720 weapons were seized, including 450 hunting rifles, 17 handguns, 101 marine hunting rifles and 152 conventional weapons, in addition to 35,550 ammunition of various calibres, and 3,237,364 kg of black powder, 169,781 kg of SHM and 44,491 capsules.

On the other hand, the gendarmerie arrested more than 11.000 people of different nationalities, while 190 cells specialized in human trafficking were dismantled, which resulted in the arrest of 619 traffickers.

The National Gendarmerie services managed, across their jurisdictions, in dismantling 743 criminals gangs which resulted in the arrest of more than 4000 people, and stopped the activity of 42 neighbourhood gangs consisting of 255 involved, while the gendarmerie units specialized in combating crimes committed using information and communication technology, registered an increase in the number of cases, as it counted 1,362 information crimes, in which 1,028 people were involved.

They recorded 201.000 economic crimes, which resulted in the arrest of more than 204.000 people, as most of the criminal acts are related to violating tax laws with 87, 557 cases and violation of commercial and financial laws with 85,551 cases.