the essential
Police arrested eight people this week in Toulouse suspected of being active in large-scale drug trafficking. Special feature: the “boss”, arrested in October with 600 kg of cannabis, gave his orders from prison.
When he was transferred this Monday, June 24, to the prison of Villeneuve-lès-Magelones, near Montpellier by a large escort, Hadj must have wondered what was going on. Not sure that the cascade of arrests carried out the next day at dawn by investigators from the Toulouse anti-drug unit had reached his ears, he who is now in solitary confinement. However, in the Toulouse drug “world”, “the operation is shaking up”, confides an insider.
For more than ten years, around this boy, now 37 years old and arrested in the fall with 600 kg of cannabis, a lot of drugs have been transported and sold. This man made his public appearance in January 2015 when the gendarmes from the Toulouse research section arrested him, with accomplices. They then seized more than a ton of cannabis!
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Six years in prison later, a sentence handed down by the Bordeaux interregional specialized jurisdiction in 2017, this “child” from La Reynerie in Toulouse has resumed his “business”. This time it was the police officers from the OFAST branch who put an end to his bad habits by intercepting a GO fast in mid-October.
The key to telephone exchanges
End of the story ? Some could believe it. Investigators from the organized and specialized crime division, who have good ideas, continued to work on letters rogatory from the Toulouse investigating judge.
These specialists, very discreet about this operation, arrested eight people in and around Toulouse on Tuesday. The searches made it possible to recover more than €40,000 in cash, “a few” kilos of cannabis and cocaine, weapons, etc. At the end of their police custody, seven suspects were presented to the investigating judge to be charged. Unsurprisingly, five were imprisoned.
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The investigations conducted over the past eight months are based on numerous telephone interceptions. From his cell in Albi, Hadj apparently gave precise instructions, or rather orders. “They have everything: the quantities, the sums of money, the recipients of the products,” confides a lawyer concerned about the precision of the elements gathered.
As in the series of murders that brought mourning to the Izards district in the summer of 2020, the police officers under the authority of the investigating judge managed to uncover the secrets of the conversations between the individuals implicated in this case. This leaves little room for dubious explanations and memory lapses. “I will look closely at the procedural conditions that allowed these interceptions,” warns Me Alexandre Parra-Bruguière, lawyer for the “chief” with Me Sarah Nabet-Claverie.
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The fact remains that this new aspect of the case further darkens the future of their client. As a repeat offender, Hadj faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. Not sure that the judges of the Toulouse criminal court, who have been harsh in recent years with drug traffickers, will find mitigating circumstances. In the meantime, the investigation continues.
