The verdict of the Ille-et-Vilaine Assize Court fell around midnight on January 24, 2025. Sentences of up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment were handed down. Seven men, aged 25 to 41, appeared for their participation in shootings against a backdrop of drug trafficking in Nantes. Two of them were acquitted.
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For ten days, the Ille-et-Vilaine Assize Court looked into three episodes of shootings that occurred in April 2019. They were “in a broader context of drug trafficking” led by the L. brothers, then in “trade dispute” with MA, declared President Nicolas Léger-Larue de Tournemine at the opening of the trial.
In the so-called Gomorra trial, seven men appeared after the shootings in Nantes in 2019.
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© Myriam Thiébaut / France televisions
It is also in reference to the novel by Roberto Saviano and the film Gomorra, about a powerful Neapolitan mafia phenomenon in Italy, that the trial held in Rennes was given this name, Gomorra trial.
On the night of April 5, 2019, MA, 24 years old at the time, was shot in the hand in particular in front of his home in Nantes. On April 19, shots broke out at Place Mendès-France, in the Bellevue district (east of Nantes). Three days later, four young men were shot and injured in the same square.
This series of shootings is linked to other shootings, one in February 2019 during MA's wedding, and the other at the end of April 2019 which left a person dead in a hookah bar, Moonlight. These are subject to separate procedures.
-On April 23, 2019, a shooting broke out in this hookah bar. A young waiter is affected. He died in hospital from his injuries.
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© FTV
At the time, between 2019 and 2021, 156 shootings were recorded in Nantes, leaving five dead and around fifty injured. The fault lies in increasingly significant drug trafficking, leading to several gang wars between different districts of Nantes. The clan from the Malakoff district and that from the Bellevue district then clash.
Of the seven men who appeared before the Ille-et-Vilaine assizes, one was accused in particular of attempted murder by an organized gang, three for complicity in attempted murder and three others for criminal conspiracy.
The investigation, carried out by the specialized interregional jurisdiction (JIRS) of Rennes, distinguished the roles of each: the arms suppliers, the logisticians, responsible for keeping vehicles and rifles in a safe place, and the shooters.
Place Pierre-Mendès-France in the Bellevue district of Nantes, in April 2019 (illustrative photo).
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© Sandrine Gadet / France Télévisions
During the trial, a major security system was deployed around the Parliament of Brittany, where the Assize Court sits, with a strong police presence and a ban on all vehicle traffic around the building.
In 2023, the Nantes prosecutor's office recorded around forty shooting episodes in the city, killing four people.against a probable backdrop of settling of scores“.
