Roma families face trial for burglary ring in France, Belgium, Germany

Over 20 Roma have gone on trial in eastern France, accused of forcing their children to commit crimes. The case comes as France is embroiled in a bitter row over the government’s attitude to the Roma.

A Roma camp in northern France - government clearances of camps has caused controversy Reuters/Pascal Rossignol

The 27 Roma, all originally from Croatia and aged between 19 and 55, are accused of enlisting their wives and children to carry out burglaries in France, Belgium and Germany.

The three families, whose trial started on Monday in Nancy, allegedly traded women on the strength of their stealing skills and used children like an army.

The case is described as “extraordinary” by the police - the families are said to be behind more than 100 robberies in 2011 alone.

Children could earn their families as much as 5,000 euros a week, according to the public prosecutor, who described their years of theft as a “kind of national service”.

In one “particularly shocking incident”, he said, a man asked his 12-year-old daughter to put a watch worth 80,000 euros up her anus because he knew police would not carry out a body search on a minor.

Investigators placed phone taps on 120 people.

They say they uncovered a system of organisation headed by clan chiefs, backed up by “captains” and “lieutenants”.

Wives were sold for as much as 180,000 euros, their value rising with their skill at theft and the ease with which they could pass themselves off as minors, prosecutors say, although the defence insists the money was just a traditional dowry.

The defendants, who could face up to 10 years in jail, deny all the charges.

Defendant Vjekoslav Lovric, a 46-year-old alleged clan chief, described the case against him as “nothing but lies”.

The trial comes at a sensitive time for France.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls sparked controversy at home and criticism from the EU last week, when he said most of the Roma did not want to integrate, sparking an angry response from Housing Minister Cécile Duflot.

And Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday opposed Romania and Bulgaria, countries from which some Roma come to France, joining the Schengen group of nations.

“I hope there will not be a judicial stigmatisation like the current political stigmatisation,” declared one of the defence lawyers, Alain Behr.

A 66-year-old woman who has been identified as the head of the network has been arrested in Croatia on a European Union arrest warrant and is to stand trial separately.