FILE “If you are spotted, you can take a bullet in the head”: Hérault resident Thierry Aldebert recounts ten years of GIGN

magictr | April 14, 2024 | News | No Comments

Ne pas “griller” l'affaire, mais ramener du renseignement, une des missions du GIGN. DR

L’Héraultais Thierry Aldebert a passé dix ans au GIGN, entre infitrations face au terrorisme ou au banditisme et protection de personnalités, il raconte cette expérience unique dans cette unité qui fête ses 50 ans… Comme lui.

As a symbol: Hérault resident Thierry Aldebert is celebrating his 50th birthday this year, as the elite unit of the GIGN where he served for ten years of his life. To carry out "non-standard" security, shadowing and observation missions, its "favorite", against terrorists and other drug or arms traffickers.

"You are there to save lives in the event of a hostage-taking or preserve lives preventively" summarizes the one for whom this commitment was natural, succeeding in integrating the cream of the gendarmerie, even if he was not "not brilliant academically speaking" is he laughing today.

But that "was on my mind" since a vacation in Sauvian (Hérault) with his grandparents where, at 12 years old, a friend told him about it. Another clue: the mother of his children who, in 1976, took the school bus every day in Djibouti, taken hostage on February 3. This is the first major affair of the GIGN. "There were deaths… She had missed the bus and left on foot" reports Thierry Aldebert.

He begins as head of the "safety-security-protection" mission and recounts two "hot" moments. The evacuation from Iraq of hostages Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, released on Christmas Eve 2004.

Exfiltrate the hostages from Baghdad where there were 90 attacks per day

"They had to be extracted from Baghdad to the government plane. There were a lot of attacks on the line leading to the airport, cars or dead animals were trapped, they also put explosives in the bitumen craters and covered with bitumen nine", he reports.

"Chirac and the families were waiting… It’s a relief when you see the plane take off towards France".

Fight against terrorism, banditry, protect personalities…. DR
Still in Iraq, he protects judge Philippe Couroye who was investigating the oil-for-food affair and was to question Tarek Haziz in American prisons.

"In Baghdad, the peak was more than 90 attacks per day" recalls the one who was also a “counter-sniper", ready to draw, during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Lourdes, 20 years ago, on April 12, 2004.

Counter-sniper for the Pope's visit

He then heads the GOR (observation research group) and immediately creates its successor the FOR (observation research force) for GIGN 2.0.

The targets ? Corsican or Basque independence, religious Islamism, like this mission in the Nice hinterland where shooters are neutralized on the sidelines of a summit of European powers.

"In camouflage gear, we are invisible. These are great moments of adrenaline, we don't want to get grilled and toasted the next day. business, but intelligence must be sought out and taken risks" he analyzes.

"ETA had murdered two Spanish civil guards in the Basque country, they had been spotted. If you are detected, the guys in front have no mercy, they will put a bullet in your head."

"My guys were hidden in the "green", it’was a movie"

He also took part in the Hélifast mission, these bandits who transported shipments of cannabis by helicopter to the heart of Hérault.

Drug traffickers filmed without their knowledge in Hérault. DR

"I put my guys hidden in the “verte”, the scrubland, it’was a film.. One of the protagonists, Gilbert Casanova, had been protected by the GIGN a few years earlier when he was president of the CCI in Corsica..

He also flushes out a former African dignitary for war crimes or tracks the journey of an individual suspected of having raped and burned Jennifer Charron, an 18-year-old waitress, finding the link with the victim.