• Ten people, aged between 28 and 56, accused of belonging to a powerful drug trafficking network in Marseille are being tried for various criminal associations by the Assize Court of Aix-en-Provence.
  • Three of them are directly accused of a murder committed in February 2017 at the end of a chase on the A55, a motorway that connects Marseille to Martigues, the starting point of this investigation.
  • At the sight of the equipment discovered by the investigators and the wiretaps carried out, all are accused of having formed a criminal association that would have planned other murders in addition to engaging in lucrative drug trafficking.
  • Mohamed Djeha, known as "Mimo", the suspected leader of this network and also accused in this trial, remains untraceable.

The jurors of the Assize Court of Aix-en-Provence have eleven days of hearing to forge a conviction. In front of the court, nine defendants are expected this Tuesday, suspected of having constituted one of the most powerful drug trafficking networks ever established in Marseille. According to the investigators, these men participated in the management of the points of sale of the Vieux-Moulin and Kallisté, but especially that of the Tower K of La Castellane, one of the most lucrative ever to have existed in Marseille - up to 80,000 euros per day. A tower since demolished piece by piece from 2019.

And if only three of them answer for the charge of murder, all appear for various criminal associations. For drug trafficking obviously, possession and transport of weapons too, but especially for the preparation of other crimes of which the investigators suspected, qualification which earned them their referral to the Assize Court. The trial is scheduled for May 2-17.

What is the beginning of the case?

A55 motorway, 22:40 p.m., February 16, 2017. Pursued by a black BMW, a white Twingo with graffiti speeds at nearly 160 km/h on the motorway linking Martigues to Marseille. Shortly after the exit of Gignac-la-Nerthe, the BMW catches up with the Twingo and goes up to it. Shots rang out, the Twingo zigzaged and then overturned on the roof. A man gets off the BMW to finish "the job". Carrying a long weapon, he executes the driver of the Twingo, before bursting the rear of the Twingo, which catches fire. The killers fainted in the night and, a few hours later, two BMW vehicles, reported stolen, were found burned on the side of Simiane Colombe and Pennes-Mirabeau, on the road to Aix.

The victim is quickly identified: it is Kader Benaicha, 31 years old. During his identification with a DNA sample, investigators realize that the victim's profile "matches" with a fingerprint found at another crime scene. That of the murder of Mourad Boughanmi, shot dead at the wheel of his black Clio in a city of the 15th arrondissement of Marseille on May 24, 2016, with his two-year-old son in the back. On the same seals of this case, the police note the genetic profile of Karim Boukhiar, murdered on February 23, 2017, eight days after the murder committed on the highway.

If there were to remain the ounce of doubt as to the fact that it was a settling of scores for which the teams of drug traffickers in Marseille have a sad reputation, this element finished to lift it.

How did the police bring the investigation to a successful conclusion?

As often in these cases, it is an anonymous tip that puts the judicial police on the trail of individuals who are tried as of Tuesday. The tip comes from a "sycophant" specifies the report of the police officer who collected it on June 21, 2017, four months after the facts but four days after an assassination attempt committed on Nabil Boughanmi. This sycophant, a professional informant according to the term used in ancient Greece, indicates that Kader Benaicha was killed by a team of criminals articulated around the brothers Boughanemi, cousins of Mourad and Nabil Boughanmi, finally shot dead on October 20, 2017. The latter informs that a certain Jean-Baptiste Fuentes would also be involved. This murder would also have its origin in a decade-old conflict between two clans of drug traffickers from Marseille: the Djouhoud, a team to which Kader Benaicha belonged, and the Boughanemi.

From shadowing to vehicle sound systems, telephone interceptions to wiretapping carried out on suspects and their entourages, investigators uncover "a perennial criminal association using location devices to carry out their criminal actions," they note. And for them, the team of criminals had not yet finished "its cleaning". Thus, during the month of January 2018, the police went to arrests and the justice indicted ten people with, in the cells of police custody, then detention, a lack of size: that of Mohamed Djeha, known as "Mimo", the "boss" of the network of La Castellane according to the police. An individual who still runs today, most certainly hidden abroad.

The searches made it possible to seize a veritable arsenal: espionage and counter-espionage equipment, several weapons, "war vehicles", that is to say deplated, accounting sheets, but above all many telephone objects, including a lot of PGP phones, BlackBerry type, with contents supposedly inviolable at the time.

It is essentially from the exploitation of the latter that the investigators draw "the contours of a team of criminals of very large scale, involved in high-level drug trafficking and assassinations".

Who are the accused?

They are ten, therefore, to be accused in this case whose investigation has more than 400 pages. Mohamed Djeha, their 41-year-old suspected boss, accused of complicity in this murder in addition to other qualifications relating to criminal associations will undoubtedly be absent. Malik and Karim Boughanemi, 46 and 50, as well as Abdelmoumen Mouzaia, 28, the three individuals directly accused of the murder of Kader Benaicha, will be brought from prison and likely present. Karim Boughanemi had already been sentenced to twenty years for murder by the Var Assize Court in 2009. His brother Malik had also already tasted the assize courts, sentenced to eight years in 1995, then to twelve years in 2007 for robberies. Sick with cancer in remission, he was on leave on the day of the murder of which he is accused. Abdelmoumen Mouzaia, the youngest in this trial, has never been convicted until then.

If they are not charged with the charges of murder of Kader Benaicha, the other six defendants are prosecuted for criminal conspiracy engaging in extensive drug trafficking and planning crimes, in addition to various weapons offences or offenses such as concealment of stolen vehicles and destruction of evidence.

Thus, Abdelghani, Abdelmoumen's twin brother, appears free, released from detention in February 2020 after two and a half years in prison. The other five accused, aged between 56 and 39, and presenting mostly sentences that are unclear in the light of the alleged facts, are all under judicial control.

Why did it become sprawling?

In addition to the discovery of a vast criminal association described by investigators, this case has also revealed the power of this team that dragged in his fall the former president of the bar of Aix-en-Provence. In the telephone interceptions and the exploitation of the defendants' encrypted messaging services, the investigators found that a lawyer familiar with the investigations, answering to the pseudonym "Baba" in the encrypted conversations, had delivered elements of the investigation to the accused and exchanged directly with Mohamed Djeha.

This led to the indictment in February 2020 of Jean-Louis Keita, a renowned criminal lawyer, a figure in the Aix Bar. The one who had defended, with Jacques Vergès, the Moroccan gardener Omar Raddad, was imprisoned for nearly three months for these facts that he has consistently denied. The telephone also revealed a case of corruption within the prison administration of Luynes prison, where an agent colluded with the thugs to bring in a phone.

What is at stake in the trial?

The defence lawyers managed to avoid a severance between criminal cases (murder and criminal association to commit crimes), which therefore fall under the Assize Court of those that would fall under the Criminal Court of Marseille: drug trafficking. A "strategy" that allows lawyers to avoid their clients a legal "double blade".

Maître Jean-Jacques Campana who defends Malik Boughanemi intends to plead the acquittal for the facts of murder and criminal associations to commit crimes for which the penalties can go up to 30 years. "There is room to work on beacons and telephone locations," he says, detailing gray areas around the use of beacons and their owners. The hearing, originally scheduled for June 2022, was then postponed after a request for additional information on these fadettes.

His client is expected to plead guilty to drug trafficking, an offense punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment. It is likely that his colleagues will adopt the same strategy.

Why is this (already) the trial of another era?

Although the facts date back a little more than six years, this trial already seems to be that of another era. The year 2016 marked a record in the number of settling scores with 29 deaths. Last year erased this grim score, with 32 deaths in the "war of stups" and 2023 started very strong with already 17 deaths.

Beyond this macabre accounting, conflicts have evolved. Currently, it is two clans of La Paternelle who are engaged in a merciless war. The methods especially seem to have evolved in a few years. Teams of killers are increasingly engaging in intimidation, randomly raiding, targeting and killing small hands of trafficking when they do not outright kill people who had the only misfortune to be in the path of the bullets, like this 63-year-old man who died Monday, April 24. The profile of victims has also rejuvenated, rising to an average of 27 years ten years ago, against 23 years last year, calculated the Marseille prosecutor's office. Teams of killers are also getting younger and younger. In the trial that begins on Tuesday, three of the four main protagonists all have more than 40 years on the clock.

If the old-fashioned "reglos", in a "professional" way so to speak, with tracer beacons on targets sometimes shot far from home or the place of trafficking are always short, the violence of the drug networks of Marseille is becoming more and more blind.

  • Justice
  • Marseille
  • Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
  • PACA
  • Assize Court
  • Aix
  • Account settlement
  • Drug trafficking
  • Drug traffickers