Major Drug Traffickers Arrested in Spain and Dubai After Decade-Long Manhunt

Gabin Feriolo, on the run for more than 10 years, and Tarik Kerbouci were arrested following the dismantling in recent years of two encrypted messaging services (EncroChat and Sky ECC) and the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of messages exchanged between traffickers around the world, reports Le Journal du Dimanche. The first was arrested in mid-July as he got off a plane at Malaga airport. A feat accomplished by the Guarda Civil. Suspected of supplying the French market from Morocco and the Costa Del Sol, this drug trafficker in his 50s who lived with his Moroccan girlfriend in Casablanca was handed over to the French authorities and incarcerated at the end of August.

The second, Tarik Kerbouci, 37, was arrested in Dubai on July 25, just a few weeks after the visit to the emirate at the end of June of the head of the Ofast Stéphanie Cherbonnier. Just a few weeks before the record seizure of 3.3 tons of cocaine near Marseille in February 2020, he was already on the "Top 50" of Ofast’s targets. This man nicknamed "Bison" is suspected of being involved in this largest cocaine seizure ever made in metropolitan France.