Marseille: heavy sentences for three men linked to drug banditry

Europe 1 with AFP // Credits: Loïc Venance/AFP 8:28 p.m., February 16, 2024

Sentences of up to ten years in prison were handed down on Friday against three men suspected of belonging to Marseille drug banditry and arrested in 2019 after a chase with a Kalashnikov in their vehicle. After a chase punctuated by an accident, the fugitives, one of whom was in a state of escape after being on leave, were arrested. In the trunk, the police discovered an unloaded Kalashnikov and three black outfits with sizes corresponding to the build of the vehicle's occupants. 

All three will be indicted in June 2020 for a double assassination committed on August 30, 2019, which notably targeted a leading figure in Marseille narcobanditism. Two were also indicted for an assassination on August 15, 2019 in Nancy. These “contextual elements” led the prosecutor to say that this transport of a weapon could “be part of a series of facts with more significant consequences”. A few months after his arrest, one of the three defendants wrote to the investigating judge to take sole responsibility: “It was I who recovered this weapon from an acquaintance in prison,” he repeated to the court.

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“An exaggerated, unjust and disproportionate sentence”

He would have bought this weapon for 2,700 euros, thanks to a "treasure" buried before his incarceration, in 2013, for 17 armed robberies: "It was to reassure me, to dissuade a danger", explained the defendant, who had the subject of an assassination attempt in 2013. This young man aged 28 had claimed "a first confession" for "this step taken towards the court". However, he was sentenced to ten years in prison for offenses against weapons legislation and for criminal conspiracy: "An exaggerated, unjust and disproportionate sentence", according to his defender, Mr. Yassine Maharsi.

The driver of the vehicle, aged 27, was sentenced to six years in prison, but the court revoked a previous suspended sentence of one year and seven months. “When they were arrested, one was in shorts, the other dressed all in orange, they were driving in a blue electric vehicle. In the car, there were no gloves, no hoods, no ammunition ... Where is the criminal association?" pleaded Me Mehdi Khezami, his defender. Sentenced to five years in prison, the youngest of the trio, aged 24, only admitted to seeing the weapon when it was loaded into the vehicle.