While Marseille has known since the end of June an upsurge in violence linked to drug trafficking, the socialist mayor of the city, Benoît Payan, demanded, Monday, August 23, on Franceinfo, the creation of a "special prosecution for fight against drug trafficking "in Marseille. 

"The state must, and I think it is aware of it, take the measure of what is happening," insisted the socialist mayor.

"We are not talking about 2-3 teenagers running around with weed bars in their pockets. We are dealing with an international organized crime. We are talking about trafficking which generates millions of euros in income every month."

"The public prosecutor does what she can, but she does not have the means to hit hard. Justice is under-endowed. We do not fight against trafficking of this dimension with means that are not available. height, ”he continued.

In total, the judicial police have counted 15 deaths linked to drug trafficking since the start of the year.

On the night of Saturday 21 to Sunday 22 August, two people were killed during a shooting in the city of the Blue Navy, one of the most impoverished in the city.

A few hours later, a third individual was kidnapped and then burned alive in his car. 

These two new settlements came just three days after the death of a 14-year-old teenager, shot dead while on a lookout point at the entrance to the city where he lived, in the neighborhoods north of town.

Two other young people, a teenager of the same age and an 8-year-old child, were also injured.

The case sent shock waves through the city.

"I will not stand idly by, watch the bullets go by and count the dead every day," the city councilor hammered again.

"You have to tackle the root of the trafficking. You have to hit where it hurts, that is to say with money and with weapons."

A court on the verge of asphyxiation

This request from Benoît Payan comes as the city's magistrates have been sounding the alarm for several months on the situation at the Marseille court, the third in France after Paris and Bobigny. 

In March 2021, its president, Olivier Leurent, denounced to the newspaper Le Monde, a crying lack of resources of the institution, both in terms of staff, material or available courtrooms. 

For good reason, the court of Marseille, a city often nicknamed "the Bobigny du Sud" in the legal world because of the mass of cases and the poverty of its population, must deal with cases from all over the Mediterranean arc. , or 22 departments. 

And unlike Bobigny, the court also has extended powers.

It already has a pole in charge of the fight against organized crime, but this one sees cases arriving from several courts of appeal, such as Perpignan, Aix-en-Provence, or even Corsica.

If the Ministry of the Interior had chosen to strengthen the police force engaged in the fight against drug trafficking in the city of Marseille, the four magistrates who are assigned to this pole are not sufficient to handle all cases.

And due to a lack of available space, some cases have to wait years to go to trial. 

In addition, this specialized court only handles large-scale cases.

The majority of homicides are handled by the traditional prosecution.

And there too, the business is jostling. 

For Nathalie Roche, examining magistrate and co-delegate of the section of the Syndicat de la magistrature de Marseille, the establishment of a specialized prosecution, as proposed by Benoît Payan, would thus be insufficient. "A prosecution is someone who pursues. When we have prosecuted and we really have to deal with international drug trafficking, significant financial flows, we need investigations, investigating judges. We need a court that can accommodate large secure rooms with enough judges ", she explains, at the microphone of Franceinfo. 

"We need more staff, more staff, we need investigating judges, correctional judges, clerks, agents who are able to handle these procedures. We need premises because the court of Marseille today ' hui does not have enough rooms to judge all the cases, ”she sums up.

Faced with this situation, the heads of the jurisdiction had requested an audit from the Ministry of Justice.

This one should report its results soon.

Additional courtrooms have also been promised for 2022. Magistrates now hope to see additional staff arrive. 

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