Marseille Drug Kingpin "Mimo" Captured in Algeria After Years on the Run

Wanted for several years by the Anti-Narcotics Office (OFAST) and the Marseille justice system, Mohamed Djeha, 41, originally from Béjaïa, grew up in La Castellane, a neighborhood in the 15th arrondissement of Marseille, where he runs a powerful drug trafficking network. The Franco-Algerian, placed "under judicial supervision" by the Algerian authorities, will probably not be extradited to France to serve his sentences, confides an official source to Journal Du Dimanche.

In 2019, the drug trafficker had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering. Last May, he was also sentenced in absentia to 30 years in prison by the Aix-en-Provence Assize Court in a case of a score settlement dating back to February 2017. Considered the head of a network of "distribution of cocaine and cannabis in Marseille" and in other French cities, Mohamed continued to carry out his activities from his hideouts in Morocco, Dubai or Algeria, says a police source.

"Since 2018 and the first trial, "Mimo" no longer resided in France. We knew he was traveling between Dubai, Algeria and Morocco," notes the same source, specifying that the Franco-Algerian used false identities to travel and avoided Dubai for fear of being extradited to France.