Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

French drug gang leader arrested in Morocco: officials

The alleged leader of a major drug gang from the southern French port city of Marseille has been arrested in Morocco, French authorities announced on Saturday.

Published: 9 March 2024 18:42 CET
Police officers are seen in the northern district of in Marseille
Police officers are seen in the northern district of in Marseille, southern France in 2023. An alleged leader of a major drug gang in the port city has been arrested in Morocco. (Photo by CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP)

Marseille, France’s second-largest city but also one of its poorest metropoles, has been hit by drug-related violence.

“One of Marseille’s biggest drug traffickers was arrested in Morocco. Bravo to the police officers who tirelessly continue the fight against drug trafficking,” French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He thanked the authorities of Morocco, saying “a big blow” had been dealt to drug trafficking.

Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone told AFP that Felix Bingui, 33, had been detained in the port city of Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city.

Bingui is believed to be the leader of Yoda, one of Marseille’s main drug gangs.

According to a source, the arrest was the result of months-long cooperation between French and Moroccan officials.

The gritty Mediterranean city’s northern neighbourhoods, notorious for their rundown streets and housing estates, are seen as the hub of the narcotics trade.

The city has in recent years witnessed a turf war for control of the highly profitable drug market between Yoda and another major clan known as DZ Mafia.

According to a source close to the investigation, Bingui regularly shuttled back and forth between France and Morocco until the outbreak of the turf war with DZ Mafia in February, 2023.

Last year, 49 people were killed and more than 120 received injuries in drug-related violence between rival gangs in Marseille.

A notorious drug smuggler, Karim Harrat, was extradited from Morocco to France in 2023.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.

Published: 22 May 2024 16:32 CEST
Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before “departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station” in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.

Investigators added that the suspects’ “reservations had been made from Bulgaria”.

An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.

On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.

Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.

The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.

“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.

It was “despicable” to target the Holocaust Memorial, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, calling the act a, “hateful rallying cry against Jews”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the act as one of “odious anti-Semitism”.

The vandalism “damages the memory” both of those who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the victims, he wrote on X.

“The (French) Republic, as always, will remain steadfast in the face of odious anti-Semitism,” he added.

Around 10 other spots, including schools and nurseries, around the historic Marais district home to many Jews were similarly tagged, central Paris district mayor Ariel Weil told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish population of any country outside Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The country has been on high alert for anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the state’s campaign of reprisals in Gaza in the months since.

In February, a French source told AFP that Paris’s internal security service believed Russia’s FSB security service was behind an October graffiti campaign tagging stars of David on Paris buildings.

A Moldovan couple was arrested in the case.

SHOW COMMENTS