The Bobigny court sentenced on Friday April 21 to six to ten years in prison the drug trafficking executives of the Boute-en-Train city of Saint-Ouen, one of the main deal points in Seine- Saint-Denis until its evacuation in 2021.
Eleven men and one woman, aged 25 to 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 at the gates of Paris open 24 hours a day, which, according to the prosecution, constituted “
the most successful version of city trafficking
”.
"Law of silence"
At the end of a trial marked by "
a scrupulous application of the law of silence
", the court found the defendants guilty for their involvement, to varying degrees, in this "
extremely lucrative
" traffic.
For the only nine months covered by the procedure, the turnover can thus be evaluated at "
five-six million euros
", detailed the president Jean-Baptiste Acchiardi.
Owner of the deal point and head of the "
Boutes
" network, El Mehdi Zouhairi, alias "
Le Gros
" or "
Unhealthy
", was awarded the maximum sentence of ten years in prison because of his "
particular dangerousness
". as well as a fine of two million euros.
This 33-year-old rap producer was not present at the hearing.
On the run in Morocco since the assassination in 2019 of the head of a rival clan in the Saint-Ouen deal, he continues to escape French justice despite multiple arrest warrants and legal proceedings against him.
"Factual and legal aberration"
Detained since his arrest at the end of 2020 after months of wiretapping, his right-hand man "
Mojito
", who managed day-to-day traffic in Saint-Ouen and executed the orders given remotely by the "
Big
", was sentenced to seven years of prison and a fine of 200,000 euros.
“
Retaining the association of criminals and cocaine trafficking is a factual and legal aberration
,” lamented his lawyer Yassine Bouzrou to AFP.
A semi-wholesaler, "
involved in drug trafficking to a high degree
", was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of one million euros.
Two other Zouhairi lieutenants received six years in prison and a 100,000 euro fine.
The seven other defendants, lower on the scale of trafficking and who appeared free, were sentenced to sentences containing mainly suspended sentences.
Faced with their advanced dilapidation and traffic out of control, the two towers, located in the heart of the famous Puces de Saint-Ouen, ended up being emptied of their inhabitants in 2021 and condemned, putting a radical end to the Boute- by train.
