Alleged Nantes Drug Kingpin Arrested in Morocco

Issam Lahrach, nicknamed "the Feather", is no longer free to move around. Suspected by the French investigative services of being a baron of the drug trafficking in Nantes, he was arrested by the Moroccan authorities as part of an investigation into a kidnapping and sequestration, reveals Le Parisien. A case investigated by the Moroccan justice system, alongside some of his close associates, according to a judicial source. Also cited in this case, the rapper Maes had, for his part, been arrested in Casablanca. He had left Dubai, where he has been living for more than two years, to join Morocco, just before the visit of Gérald Darmanin, Minister of Justice, in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Le Nouvel Obs had revealed on January 22, 2025. The rapper was the subject of an international arrest warrant.

In addition to the fact that his name regularly appears in the files of score-settling and drug trafficking in Nantes, Lahrach is currently the subject of a criminal investigation for "organized importation of narcotics", after the seizure in May 2022 of 360 kg of cocaine in a container in Montoir-de-Bretagne (44) and the arrest, at the end of 2023, of a 22-year-old woman at Orly airport, with a suitcase loaded with this white powder, the Rennes prosecutor’s office informs, specifying that he is "no longer indicted" in any Jirs case. He is suspected of being the common denominator in these two cases. In 2019, "the Feather" had benefited from a dismissal after a series of shootings that had broken out in Nantes.

After his arrest, France could request his extradition. But as he is Moroccan, he will never be extradited.

Update: the man arrested in Morocco is not Issam Lahrach, the newspaper Le Parisien has corrected. It is a namesake.