Cannabis Kingpin’s Decade-Long Flight Ends in Paris Arrest

Ameur Mansouri was apprehended on Thursday evening in the capital by investigators from the Versailles research and intervention brigade (BRI). On the run since 2012, he had taken refuge in Morocco from where he would have continued to pilot his activities. Presented to the Paris prosecutor’s office, he was incarcerated in the Fresnes prison in execution of two arrest warrants.

He was particularly wanted for a case that earned him a default conviction to fifteen years in prison in 2023. In 2015, his network had organized the theft of a helicopter in the Yvelines through fraud. The aircraft was then used for more than a year to import hundreds of kilos of cannabis from Morocco to Spain, before being intercepted in 2016 near Seville with a cargo of 740 kilograms.

Another arrest warrant concerned him for a nine-year prison sentence handed down in 2017, related to the seizure of more than 500 kg of cannabis in 2008 in Arcueil. Originally from Montrouge, "Mounir" has been known to the justice system for about twenty years and his criminal record includes multiple convictions for drug and arms trafficking.

As Ameur Mansouri has appealed his default convictions, he should be retried in the coming months for these two cases. He will also have to answer to other facts, including money laundering.