Thirty years of criminal imprisonment, with a security period of 20 years, were required on Friday February 3 against Christopher Aouni, 37, a supposed figure in Marseille narcobanditry, tried for the murder of a 30-year-old man shot dead during a game of maps.
Saci Labidi was killed by two Kalashnikov shots at point-blank range, on March 24, 2018, in the local association of the Consolat city, in the working-class neighborhoods in the north of Marseille, plagued by drug trafficking.
An assassination in order, according to Advocate General Christophe Raffin, who asked the jurors of the Assize Court of Aix-en-Provence to retain the premeditation, the authors having taken care, a few days earlier, to stick a OM sticker on the back door of the premises to identify it during scouting.
Evidence by geolocation
If the accused disputes being the author of this execution, elements of telephony would place him on the spot at the time of the murder.
The investigation established that an encrypted PGP-type telephone had been used by the perpetrators, a telephone whose route was then geolocated to the place of the fire of the commando vehicle, in Vitrolles, a few minutes after the events.
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However, for the prosecution, Christopher Aouni was indeed the holder of this PGP, this telephone triggering in the hours preceding the murder the same relay cells as his vehicle equipped with a telematics box.
"
We are following him closely
," insisted the Advocate General.
Never seen
During the debates, Christopher Aouni insisted that this PGP was in the possession of one of his friends, Hichem Menadjlia, who would have received it from the hands of a trafficker nicknamed "
Zébu
".
In a process that the police described as "
never seen
", the first had presented himself in the days following the arrest of Christopher Aouni, to claim ownership of the PGP.
Since then, Hichem and "
Zébu
" have also been killed, in what appears to be an internal war with the so-called "
Marignane
" gang, one of the main teams of local narcobanditry, according to the judicial police.
Despite multiple testimonies and his involvement in other cases with members of this clan, Christopher Aouni denies having been part of it.
"The dead have all the wrongs"
"
In cases like this, it's recurrent, the dead have all the wrongs
," quipped Me Fabien Perez, lawyer for those close to Saci Labidi.
According to the Advocate General, the victim, a coachbuilder very established in the social life of the district, would have opposed the establishment of a second point of sale of narcotics in Consolat, and he would even have chased dealers.
However, the Marignane team multiplied operations at the time to set up or take over networks in the cities of Marseilles.
In recent years, 45% of the settlements of accounts perpetrated in France in connection with drug trafficking have been in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and a third in Marseille, underlined the Advocate General.
During the first half of 2023, the Assize Court of Bouches-du-Rhône will be called upon to judge eight cases of settlement of accounts, he indicated.
The defense of Christopher Aouni will plead his acquittal in the afternoon.
