Moroccan Drug Cartel ’Mocro Maffia’ Expands Operations Across Spain

The Mocro Maffia began to make headlines on the Costa del Sol since 2014, the year Samir Bouyakhrichan was shot dead in a restaurant in Benahavis in Malaga. This was followed by a series of murders of rival gang members, including that of drug trafficker Hamza Ziani, killed in a Torremolinos restaurant, or Marco Yaqout, a drug baron in Marbella, riddled with bullets in 2019. The latter was the cousin of Naoufal Fassih, one of the major drug traffickers in the Netherlands.

But in recent years, the actions of the Mocro Maffia have been felt more in Madrid and Barcelona, reports El Debate. In October 2022, the national police and the Mossos d’Esquadra managed to thwart their first attempt to settle in Catalonia. An investigation opened in 2020 had made it possible to discover the involvement of a Dutchman residing in Catalonia in a money laundering network in Europe and the arrest of one of the murderers of the Dutch journalist Peter R. de Vries.

The Mocro Maffia is also suspected of being involved in the assault on Spanish politician Alejo Vidal-Quadras on November 9 in Madrid. The investigation is ongoing. On April 26, a woman was arrested in the Netherlands for having commissioned this attack. She would have hired Ayari Mehrez, a hitman, who in turn asked his brother, an active member of the Mocro Maffia, to kill Alejo Vidal-Quadras. But the latter missed his target, injuring him in the head.

On March 20, a young man, a member of the Mocro Maffia, was arrested in the El Príncipe district of Ceuta for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping of rival gang members. The Moroccan criminal network operating in Belgium and the Netherlands would also be involved in the assassination of Iranian dissidents.