This night from June 11 to 12, 2014, the car of Karim Tir, then Jul’s manager, ends its race on a roundabout in Asnières, in the Hauts-de-Seine. Arrived almost immediately on the spot, the first aid finds that the victim presents a scalp to the skull. Then very quickly his death, as a result of gunshots, not a road accident. The trial for the assassination of Karim Tir is being held from Monday, and for three weeks, before the Assize Court of Aix-en-Provence. Eight people are appearing in this case, three of whom are accused of intentional homicide with premeditation committed by an organized gang. According to the order for reference, this gang has two other alleged members, who themselves have since been murdered.
During his hearing, the day after the assassination of Karim Tir, Jul described the victim as “the best manager in France”. He indicates that he only frequented him “on a professional basis”, without ever feeling “threatened” The singer cannot present to the investigators the mobile phone with which he joined him, “having broken it inadvertently after trying to reach his manager, to no avail, on several occasions”. Jul must be cited as a witness during this trial which is being held in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Paris in fact divested itself in December 2015 in favor of Marseille: “The assassination of Karim Tir, although taking place in the region Parisian was fully part of an old criminal context in Marseilles, ”writes the order for reference.
“An easier target to hit”
Since the beginning of the 2000s, two clans, two families yet linked to each other at the start, have been waging a fratricidal war against a background of drug trafficking in the Font Vert housing estate, in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille. About twenty settlings of scores are attributed to this rivalry between the Tir and Remadnia families, several of which have already given rise to lawsuits. What is striking in the one that opens on Monday is not so much the now better known description of this “vendetta”, but the illustration of a very organized settling of scores.
Due to his closeness to Jul, Karim Tir is described by the investigators as “an easier target to reach” than his brother Hichem Tir, the victim of an assassination attempt a few months earlier and then went into total hiding. “His activities as manager of singer-songwriter Jul, who was on the rise and was already experiencing resounding success, gave him visibility conducive to his monitoring and follow-up,” say the investigators. They also highlight a “very structured alliance in which there was a hierarchy and a distribution of roles”.
Trackers, jammers, police armbands, etc.
A witness heard on condition of anonymity explains, for example, having hosted in an apartment in Saint-Gratien, in the Paris region, four men “coming from Marseille”. He does not know their names but says that they stayed “a month and a half, only going out to track their target”. He also describes to investigators the means used to track their target’s car: trackers, jammers, balaclavas, police armbands… rather questionable patchwork file, ”says Me Anna Maria Sollacaro, lawyer for one of the main defendants. “Whether it’s Jul, Johnny Halliday, I don’t care, I would like this trial to be deflated, so that it isn’t a show trial. »