He had been on the run since last March. Considered by French police to be one of the most important drug traffickers, Sofiane Hambli was arrested on Friday at a clinic in Tangier, Morocco, where he was admitted after being assaulted, learns 20 minutes from a source close to the case,
confirming information from The Obs. Wanted in the context of a drug importation case, he presented himself at the reception of the establishment, wounded in the face, with false German papers. This did not prevent the local authorities from identifying him. On Saturday, the Directorate General of Moroccan National Security (DGSN) was also
cracked a tweet to welcome the arrest of “a French national of Algerian origin” involved in “international drug trafficking”, without specifying his identity.
Nicknamed “The Chimera”, Sofiane Hambli, was arrested in Bordeaux last November by investigators from the Parisian PJ’s narcotics squad. He is suspected of having received 2.5 million euros to organize the logistics of importing four tonnes of cannabis, which he denies. The 46-year-old man was remanded in custody before being released under judicial supervision last March after a favorable ruling from the Court of Cassation. A few days later, the investigative chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal issued a committal warrant against him so that he could be imprisoned again. Too late, Sofiane Hambli had fled. He had since been the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.
Accustomed to the run
The trafficker with a heavy criminal record is customary on the run. He was notably arrested in 2004 in Spain after his escape the previous year from Metz prison. In 2009, it was still in Spain that he was arrested when a French court sentenced him by default to 18 years in prison.
Sofiane Hambli is also known to be the key figure in the scandal of the importation into France of seven tons of cannabis in 2015, which resulted in the ousting of the former boss of the fight against drugs François Thierry. The drugs had been discovered by customs officers in three vans parked on Boulevard Exelmans in Paris.
The investigation revealed that the drugs, imported from Morocco via Spain, had arrived in France during a controlled delivery, operated by the Central Office for the Suppression of Illicit Drug Trafficking (Ocrtis) with the help of Sofiane Hambli. After thirty months of detention, Hambli was released, after a decision of the investigating chamber of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal where part of the case was disoriented. But a month later, he returned to prison after violating his judicial review by traveling to Spain. He was freed during the summer of 2019 against a deposit of 150,000 euros. Contacted by 20 minutes, his lawyer, Me Hugues Vigier, was not immediately reachable.