Nearly nine months after the tragic end of rapper Samat, seven men and women, aged 31 to 43, were arrested on Monday and Tuesday in Lyon (Rhône), Dugny and La Courneuve (Seine-Saint-Denis) by investigators from the Versailles judicial police. Four of these men, suspected of having participated in this assassination, were referred, Friday before an investigating judge of the interregional jurisdiction of Paris, responsible for this particularly serious file of settling of accounts between criminals. A fifth man, arrested in the Rhône is the subject of a warrant to bring and must be brought to justice.
Back to the facts…
It is 7:30 p.m. on October 7, 2019 on avenue Stalingrad in Garges-lès-Gonesse (Val-d'Oise). Many residents call the police after hearing gunshots. A patrol quickly arrives on the spot and discovers a Renault Clio in the parking lot of the McDonald's restaurant. Behind the wheel, rapper Samat, 37, is found riddled with 13 Kalashnikov rifle bullets, five of which hit his head. He died immediately and the rescue could do nothing for him.
VIDEO. Samat, the sulphurous rapper shot dead in Garges-lès-Gonesse
His companion, dressed in a niqab, who was sitting next to him is very shocked but she is miraculously unharmed. The first witnesses evoke the presence of two men who arrived and fled aboard a black Mercedes Class A. At 9 p.m., the killers' car was found burnt down in Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis), the city that saw the rapper grow up.
The artist was still incarcerated on day parole when death struck him. "He was free during the day and had to return to sleep at night in Nanterre prison," said a source close to the case. Samat had a certain notoriety and he was gifted with a certain talent as an artist. But he also had trouble getting away with the law.
He had been arrested on September 22, 2018, avenue de New-York in Paris (XVI), after numerous traffic violations. The police had discovered, hidden behind the odometer of his car, a 9 mm automatic pistol, 32 cartridges, a little cannabis resin and 1,800 euros.
From his cell in the Osny remand center (Val-d'Oise), he had continued to manage his drug and arms trafficking affairs with five mobile phones, still pegged to his Stains connections. Finally, the rapper and his team were arrested by investigators from the central office for fighting organized crime. And already in 2010, he had been arrested for participating in a settlement of accounts in front of a supermarket in Garges-lès-Gonesse.
Gang conflict amid extortion from traders
According to our information, at the beginning of October, the rapper is still in business with thugs of Stains who practice extortion from traders in the city and the sector. "It is a mafia system which consists in offering protection to the trader against money while threatening him with reprisals in case of refusal," explains an official. Some businesses in the city have also been burned down in the past for opposing these racketeers.
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Police investigations have made it possible to understand that Samat wanted to charge a trader but he was already under the control of another gang of traffickers from Val-d'Oise. "This conflict ended very badly because the four suspects who were arrested are violent and dangerous people, capable of killing to solve their problems," said a source close to the case.
Weeks of police surveillance and eavesdropping
The investigators of the criminal brigade of the judicial police (PJ) of Versailles, supported by their colleagues from the research and intervention brigade (BRI) are responsible for conducting the investigations. They do a lot of work on the personality of the victim and their environmental disorder before they can target the members of this rival clan.
These men are watched and listened to for weeks to better understand the criminal context in which they operate. "It's quite complicated because in the two clans who live in the same corner, there are family ties that overlap," says the same source. The suspects are all known for their involvement in cases of armed robbery and drug trafficking.
The police at the PJ understand that two men were on the scene and that the others are the sponsors or the suppliers of the weapon or the car. Monday and Tuesday, they are arrested without difficulty at their respective homes. The searches failed to find the murder weapon or any other incident for that matter. During their hearings, which lasted four days, the suspects denied everything as a whole.
