Nicknamed “Bulb Head”, Rachid Belayati, 48, was considered in the early 2000s as a major player in cannabis trafficking between Spain and the Lyon region. A reputation that he disputes, alone in his box at the Assize Court of Lyon, this Monday, where he is again tried.
The man had been sentenced for the first time in 2007 by default to fifteen years of criminal imprisonment. He had opposed the verdict, after his arrest in Spain in March 2019. “We see me as carrier, opener, if I was the boss I would not have done that, this case, that’s not what the police mean me, ”said the accused at the start of his trial.
A four-story palace in Algeria
The prosecution lends him the role of main organizer of a network of about twenty traffickers, already tried, to whom investigators from the narcotics brigade of the Lyon judicial police charge nine convoys of cannabis between 2002 and 2004, generating a turnover of 3.5 million euros. According to investigators, the network operated by go-fast, then refrigerated trucks, to ensure the suspected transport of cannabis.
The investigation was marked by the seizure of 950 kilos of cannabis in July 2003 in a warehouse in Corbas, near Lyon. Investigations in Spain and Algeria have revealed the acquisition of luxury residences. According to the investigator of the PJ, heard Monday morning, Rachid Belayati had “a palace on four floors, estimated at three million by the Algerian authorities who seized the property”.
Native of a working-class district in Rive-de-Gier, in the Loire, Rachid Belayati contests the portrait of the “principal in contact with all the suppliers, the thinking head of this network” described by the director of the survey. Verdict this Tuesday.