After eight days of trial, eleven men and one woman, aged 25 to 39, were sentenced on Friday April 21 to six to ten years in prison for trafficking cannabis and cocaine in 2020 and 2021 in the city. Boute-en-Train, in Saint-Ouen, one of the main deal points in Seine-Saint-Denis until its evacuation in 2021.

This drug supermarket at the gates of Paris, open 24 hours a day, was according to the prosecution “the most successful version of city traffic”. At the end of a trial marked by “a scrupulous application of the law of silence”, the correctional court of Bobigny, in Seine-Saint-Denis declared the defendants guilty for their involvement, to varying degrees, in this “extremely lucrative “.

For the only nine months covered by the procedure, the turnover can thus be evaluated at “five-six million euros”, detailed the president of the hearing, Jean-Baptiste Acchiardi.

Ten years in prison for the alleged leader of the network, on the run

Owner of the deal point and head of the “Boutes” network, El Mehdi Zouhairi, alias “Le Gros” or “Unhealthy”, was sentenced to the maximum penalty of ten years in prison because of his “particular dangerousness”, as well as a fine of two million euros. The 33-year-old rap producer was not present at the hearing. On the run in Morocco since the assassination in 2019 of the head of a rival clan in the Saint-Ouen deal, he continues to escape French justice despite multiple arrest warrants and legal proceedings against him.

Detained since his arrest at the end of 2020 after months of wiretapping, his right-hand man “Mojito”, who managed day-to-day traffic in Saint-Ouen and carried out the orders given remotely by “Le Gros”, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 euros. “Retaining the association of criminals and cocaine trafficking is a factual and legal aberration”, lamented to Agence France-Presse his lawyer, Yassine Bouzrou.

A semi-wholesaler, “involved in drug trafficking to a high degree”, was sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of one million euros. Two other Zouhairi lieutenants received six years in prison and a 100,000 euro fine. The seven other defendants, lower on the ladder of trafficking and who appeared free, were sentenced to suspended sentences.

Faced with their advanced dilapidation and out-of-control traffic, the two towers, located in the heart of the famous Saint-Ouen flea market, ended up being emptied of their inhabitants in 2021 and condemned, putting a radical end to the Boute- by train.