Le Figaro Marseille
Sentences ranging from six months' suspended prison sentence to eight years' imprisonment and fines of up to 100,000 euros were handed down on Thursday in Marseille against twenty-five defendants who operated a deal point between 2019 and 2021.
Nannies, delivery men, field managers: all the defendants had been on trial since March 11 for having operated for two years the narcotics sales outlet in the Cité des Oliviers A, in the 13th arrondissement of Marseille, one of the most lucrative with a daily turnover of up to 60,000 to 80,000 euros.
This deal point was also one of the most secure with around twenty lookouts, sometimes armed and present even on the roofs of buildings while real “check points” made up of portcullises aimed to slow down police interventions.
Twenty-five defendants
For three weeks, the court detailed the distribution of roles between the twenty-five defendants, seven of whom appeared detained and four others in pre-trial detention in connection with another case.
The heaviest sentence, eight years in prison, was handed down to two defendants for their involvement in trafficking. One of them has already been sentenced, at the end of January, to eight years in prison for a shooting committed in 2021 in a competing city of Oliviers A and he is indicted for an assassination committed in August 2021 in Martigues against a backdrop of clan war for control of drug trafficking.
Three sentences of six years in prison and four to five years in prison were also handed down by the court, which explained that it had taken into account the role of the defendants in trafficking, the duration of the commission of the acts as well as personality elements such as the criminal history and current reintegration projects. A committal warrant and three arrest warrants were issued against four defendants who had appeared free during the proceedings.
Many delivery people
The drugs were stored and packaged in several apartments located outside the city, which required the use of numerous delivery men. Three
“feeders”
of weapons and drugs, two women and a man, were sentenced to sentences ranging from two years in prison with suspended probation to eighteen months.
At one of them, investigators discovered, in September 2020, 177 kilos of cannabis and weapons. The court also issued bans, for three to five years, on stays in the 13th arrondissement, in Marseille or in Bouches-du-Rhône.