No one knows where he is.
The high-flying drug trafficker Sofiane Hambli, indicted in November in a narcotics case, is once again on the run, said the Bobigny prosecutor's office on Wednesday, confirming information from L'Obs.
In this new case, French justice suspects him of having received 2.5 million euros to organize the logistics of importing four tonnes of cannabis, accusations that he denies according to his lawyer Hugues Vigier.
Arrested in November in Bordeaux, Sofiane Hambli had been remanded in early December in this procedure, a placement broken in mid-March by the Court of Cassation, specifies Me Vigier.
He was then released under judicial supervision, which the Bobigny prosecutor's office contested in view of the risk of flight.
Interpol has issued a red notice
A few days later, on March 22, "the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal issued a committal warrant against him" so that he could be imprisoned again, said the Bobigny prosecutor's office.
Not having presented himself to the authorities and not having been found by the police, "he is indeed on the run," added this source.
At the request of the French authorities, Interpol has issued a red notice against this 45-year-old man nicknamed "La Chimère", with a criminal record charged with heavy convictions for trafficking in cannabis. This international search notice is available on the website of the police cooperation organization. "I think he said to himself 'they organized everything so that I was stuck, they are going to put me back in detention, they absolutely want my skin." Suddenly, he probably decided to leave, ”explains his lawyer Hugues Vigier, who claims not to know where his client was.
Sofiane Hambli - whose first name is sometimes spelled "Sophiane", as on the Interpol notice - is the key figure in an investigation into the practices of the former boss of the fight against drugs François Thierry, which led to the replacement of Ocrtis by Ofast (Anti-narcotics Office) in 2019. Born in Mulhouse, the trafficker is accustomed to the run. He was notably arrested in 2004 in Spain after his escape the previous year from Metz prison. In 2009, it was still in Spain that he was arrested when a French court sentenced him by default to 18 years in prison.
