Trial Begins for 2020 Forest Shooting: Key Witness Testifies in Soufiane Benali Murder Case

On Friday, the brother of Adnane Mahroug, who was injured during the shooting in the Alfred Orban street in Forest on July 5, 2020, gave his testimony. That day, he says he learned by phone that shots had been fired in the Orban neighborhood and that his brother had been hit. He "had just finished his shift in a fast food chain around 1:00 a.m.," reports La Dernière Heure. He then takes his scooter and goes to the scene. "I saw a person under a white sheet. I thought it was my brother, then I learned that it was Soufiane Benali. And I then immediately thought: it’s Mohamed-Amine Dardour who did this," he said.

The witness had reasons to think that Mohamed-Amine Dardour was behind the shooting. "Soufiane had told me that Mohamed-Amine had threatened his brother, that they had made him enter an apartment where there were weapons and bullets. Soufiane told me: ’I fought with my brother about this story,’" he declared. The brother of Adnane Mahroug continues: "The next day, I contacted Younes Bakkali because I knew he had something to do with this story. He’s always there, in front of the laundromat on the Orban ’square’, and on the day of the events he wasn’t there. None of the gang was there. It’s very weird. I told him: ’if I hear that you had something to do with the story, I’ll hit you.’"

Soufiane Benali was shot dead by two bullets in the night of July 4 to 5, 2020 in his neighborhood, Rue Orban, in Forest. Two of his friends aged 17 and 19 were seriously injured. Youssef Jeddi and Mohamed-Amine Dardour had presented themselves spontaneously to the police after the murder to claim their innocence. Their version of the facts does not really convince the police. After being placed under arrest warrant for murder, attempted murder and verbal threats, they had been referred to the Assize Court in 2022, along with a third suspect, Younes Bakkali.

These three individuals are accused of being the perpetrators or co-perpetrators of the murder of Soufiane Benali and the attempted murder of the two injured. According to the investigation, Dardour and Jeddi would be the shooters, while Bakkali would have alerted the first two to the presence of Soufiane Benali in front of the laundromat on Alfred Orban street. The police investigations reveal that Dardour, who was at the head of a criminal association active in the sale of cannabis and cocaine since 2018, one of whose "sales outlets" was the Orban neighborhood, would have decided to attack Soufiane Benali because he was competing with him. The two rival drug dealer gangs: the one from the Orban square - the crime scene - and the one from the Saint-Antoine (de Padoue) square, less than 500 meters away, wanted to neutralize each other to take over the drug trafficking point, had reported La Capitale.