Marseille Drug Trafficking Suspect Released Days Before Sentencing, Despite Extradition

The defendant had been extradited from Morocco at the end of December 2019 and then placed in pre-trial detention for two cases. These are a score-settling incident that left two dead and one injured in October 2016, and drug trafficking in the so-called "Oliviers" network. According to the investigators, he would be one of the leaders of this traffic.

Based on the case law of the Court of Cassation on the orders taken during the covid-19 epidemic (automatic extension of pre-trial detentions), the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal had lifted his first committal order issued for drug trafficking, reports Le Dauphiné Libéré.

On July 3, 2020, he appeared for drug trafficking. On Wednesday, the Court of Cassation released the defendant, considering that the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal had taken time to rule on a request for release. In February, the lawyers had accompanied the challenge of their client’s extradition.

In his absence, the Marseille Criminal Court sentenced him on Friday to 14 years in prison, the same source specifies. An arrest warrant has been issued against him. The defendant’s lawyers will appeal. As they believe that "the court that sentenced him to 14 years in prison did so in violation of basic rights." "He was tried by people who had already described him as the head of a network and chose to try him without a lawyer, as if to punish him for filing a request for recusal," they said.