The graying heads line up alongside shaved heads and other baldness in front of the seventh chamber of the Marseille criminal court. Of the 28 defendants called to the bar on Wednesday, the majority are in their fifties. Fifties on trial in a sprawling case of international cocaine trafficking between South America, France and Italy. According to the investigators, this network, which communicated via the Tatoo beepers very fashionable in the 1990s, had transported between 2012 and 2014 in Paris airports, thanks to corrupt baggage handlers, suitcases loaded with 24 to 36 kg of cocaine extremely pure, especially from Colombia. It was then sold in the Paris region, in the south of France and even in Italy.
Fifties, who, after examination of their criminal records by the president of the court on this first day of trial, are not at their first attempt, in particular in terms of drug traffickers, at the time of their arrests in 2014 in this bizarre case. Many of them have already been convicted several times for acts sometimes dating back to the last century, like a certain Vincent Saccomano. The one who is now responsible for pancakes and waffles in a snack bar in a shopping center in the Alpes-Maritimes had to deal with justice for the first time in 1985 and was imprisoned in particular for “assassination”. Considered a pillar of the “Alps gang”, a gang involved in particular in extortion cases, Vincent Saccomano has already been convicted in the past for drug trafficking. “I had the stupidity, the weakness to want to help a friend who had redone my mother’s house, he justifies. When it came time to pay, instead of settling, he asked me to introduce him to someone who could make him more money. He wanted to do some traffic. And I had the weakness, the stupidity to accept. »
A family network
And in the matter, he is far from being the only one in this file. Considered with his two brothers as the heads of this vast network, Abdelkrim Seraf also drags behind him a heavy criminal record. “I note three convictions for facts related to drug trafficking”, blows the president. “For the first, in 1996, I was young”, justifies Abdelkrim Seraf. The public prosecutor specifies that in this same case, two other people had been convicted alongside him, and find themselves again in the Tatoo case. And among her, a certain Karim, who is none other than Abdelkrim Seraf’s brother.
Indeed, in this environment updated by the police, everyone seems to know each other. And for good reason: everyone belongs to the family circle of the other, from near or far, giving the impression that the network was held by a small tribe. Thus, according to the investigators, the three Seraf brothers had recruited brothers-in-law and cousins to support them in their business, while several companions of alleged members of the network find themselves in turn at the bar for “criminal association”.
absence and silence
But in this family, on this first day of trial, several key voices are missing. Of the 28 defendants, only 20 responded. Two of the defendants, two Colombians who allegedly acted as intermediaries between the suppliers and the corrupt baggage handlers, are on the run and under arrest warrants. A defendant will never appear, and for good reason: according to his lawyer, he died last year “under mysterious conditions. ” Protagonist of this file, Kamel Seraf was for his part admitted last week in a psychiatric clinic, for a month … that is to say the time of the duration of the trial. Another defendant called in sick for a few days.
The sign that some are afraid to speak? A dead silence indeed surrounds this file… and the statements of the defendants, such as Francisco Jimenez Galvan. Considered to have played the role of intermediary between the Seraf brothers and the Colombian drug traffickers, the sexagenarian warned from the outset: “I don’t want to lie, tell you bullshit. I prefer to remain silent out of respect. You have the whole file. »