Former mayor of Normandy village acquitted of drug trafficking

Published on: 05/07/2024 – 10:20

2 minutes

Although the Bobigny court noted a “weakening of ethical guarantees” on the part of the 47-year-old socialist elected official – who had a relationship with her deputy who was close to drug traffickers – it did not consider that there was in this case “a positive act” that could be qualified as complicity.

The former socialist mayor, who resigned in February from the position she had held since 2014, has maintained her innocence since being detained in October 2021.

She has repeatedly denied any involvement in the affairs of the Meziani clan, a family that controls drug trafficking in her town near Rouen with an iron fist.

At the end of June, the Bobigny public prosecutor's office requested a one-year suspended prison sentence against him, as well as five years of ineligibility and a fine of 10,000 euros.

'A pact of non-agression'

According to the prosecutor, the mayor's transmission of certain sensitive information to the traffickers under duress, as well as some of her relationships with the local police, amounted to a “non-aggression pact” with the traffickers.

On the other hand, the court sentenced his deputy Hasbi Colak to a one-year suspended prison sentence for having lent his car to dealers carrying out a cocaine transaction in Seine-Saint-Denis, in order to “punish breaches of integrity by an elected official”.

In a chaotic trial that lasted from late May to late June, the Bobigny court tried 18 defendants in connection with high-level cocaine, heroin and cannabis trafficking based in Canteleu, a poor town in the Rouen metropolitan area.

The clan leader on the run

According to a conservative estimate by the court, the Meziani family's criminal organization would have generated a turnover of 15 million euros in the two years covered by the investigation, between 2019 and 2021.

The head of the drug trafficking network, Aziz Meziani – known as “The U” – is currently on the run in Morocco and has been sentenced in absentia to a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a fine of two million euros.

All other defendants in the case received sentences ranging from two years suspended to eight years in prison.

(With the press agencies)