Félix Bingui soon before French justice: Gérald Darmanin thanks Morocco for its extradition agreement

An extradition agreement was concluded with Morocco to hand over to France Félix Bingui, 34, one of the main drug trafficking gangs in Marseille, arrested in March 2024, theAFP from sources close to the case.

His return to France should take place on Wednesday. Accused of being at the origin of a bloody drug trafficking war in France’s second city, Félix Bingui was arrested on March 8 in Casablanca and was awaiting extradition. According to one of the sources, the new French Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, has since his arrival worked “discreetly» with his Moroccan counterpart to obtain this agreement.

«Victory against drug banditry», welcomed Gérald Darmanin Monday on Xrecalling that when he was Minister of the Interior, he had obtained the arrest of Félix Bingui, and he thanked “very sincerely the Moroccan authorities for having initiated the extradition process, which will finally allow French justice to try him».

Félix Bingui had been arrested on an arrest warrant from a Marseille investigating judge for “importation of narcotics by an organized gang, transport, detention, acquisition, transfer of narcotics, criminal association (…) laundering and non-proof of resources».

Read also: Arrested in Morocco, the pillar of Marseille drug trafficking Félix Bingui “on the verge” of being extradited to France

In April 2024, during a hearing at the Rabat Court of Cassation, he agreed to be extradited to France. Félix Bingui, who spent his entire “career” in trafficking in Marseille, regularly traveled back and forth to Morocco until the outbreak of a “war” with the rival “DZ Mafia” gang in February 2023, when from which he had never left this Maghreb country.

The turf war between the two gangs for control of lucrative deal points – up to 80,000 euros in daily turnover in certain places – has left Marseille bloody. In 2023, 49 deaths linked to drug trafficking were recorded there, including seven minors, which was a record. In 2024, the number of these “narchomicides”, a word created precisely in Marseille, has decreased significantly, to stand at 24.