He is still hidden in Morocco. The "Gros", nickname of the head of drug trafficking Boute-en-Train was sentenced Friday to ten years in prison, at the trial of the network of this city which was one of the main points of deal of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Eleven men and one woman, aged between 25 and 39, had been on trial for eight days for trafficking cannabis and cocaine in 2020 and 2021 in these two towers overlooking the ring road. A drug supermarket on the outskirts of Paris, open 24 hours a day, which was according to the prosecutor's office "the most successful version of city trafficking".

At the end of a trial marked by "a scrupulous application of the code of silence", the court found the defendants guilty for their involvement, to varying degrees, in this "extremely lucrative" trafficking. For the nine months concerned by the procedure alone, the turnover can thus be estimated at "five-six million euros", detailed the president Jean-Baptiste Acchiardi.

Ten years in prison for the network leader

Owner of the deal point and head of the "Boutes" network, El Mehdi Zouhairi, alias "Le Gros" or "Malsain", was awarded the maximum sentence of ten years in prison because of his "particular dangerousness", as well as a fine of two million euros. The 33-year-old rap producer was not present at the hearing.

On the run in Morocco since the assassination in 2019 of the leader of a rival clan in the Saint-Ouen deal, he continues to escape French justice despite multiple arrest warrants and legal proceedings against him. Despite his absence, "he is everywhere in the file, he is everywhere at the hearing. As soon as it comes to the Zouhairi family, everyone is silent, "had noted the prosecutor Édouard Le Boulanger in his indictment Thursday.

Through the defendants' denials and evasive responses, the hearing offered a behind-the-scenes look at the industrial sale of cannabis and cocaine taking place there. This well-oiled organization operated a division of labor between the "hard workers", the little hands, and the "humans", the executives.

This hearing was part of a series of trials at the court of Bobigny devoted to drug trafficking in the cities of Saint-Ouen and its surroundings, high place of drug trafficking because of its joint ownership with Paris.

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