Police step up investigations in Sarkozy death threat case

There has been a development in the case of "le corbeau" (the crow) - or perhaps that should be put in the plural.

On Thursday, police swooped on around 20 homes in the southern French département of l'Hérault and took 11 people in for questioning

You might remember that the affair of le corbeau dates back to the end of 2008 when a number of leading politicians, including the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and several government ministers (past and present), as well as high profile media figures started receiving threatening letters, some of them accompanied by a bullet.

All the letters reportedly carried a postmark indicating they had been sent from l'Hérault.

At the beginning of this year there were two waves of letters, each one warning the recipients that their lives and those of their families were at risk.

While the media speculated as to whether the (anonymous) letters were the work of a group or a cell, the nterior minister at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie, also suggested that it could be the ramblings of an unbalanced individual or "someone who was a little deranged".

The most recently reported case (you can read about it here) was just last month, when a letter addressed to Sarkozy was intercepted at the central sorting office in the southern city of Montpellier.

Thursday's operation took place early in the morning in the town of Saint-Pons-de-Thomières as well as the neighbouring villages of Prémian and Riols (you'll need to get your maps out to locate them precisely).

Those questioned and detained were a mixed bunch, according to the regional daily Midi Libre, from all walks of life.

But some of them, says the paper, had a number of points in common such as their opposition to a local (Socialist) politician, were members of a local gun shooting club or were hunters.

This time around the police are being, as the national daily Le Figaro puts it, "prudent" in their investigations and remaining tight-lipped.

That might well have something to do with the last occasion on which someone was taken in for questioning back in March this year, when a military reservist from Montpellier was taken in held after being "denounced" by his former girlfriend, but later released without being charged.