“They’re shooting at us, I’m going to die, please sir…”. “Bang”, “bang”, “bang”. At the trial of three men who boasted of an execution on their encrypted messaging, the victims’ call for help froze the audience on Monday in Besançon.
The call to 17 was made on March 8, 2020 around 9 p.m., by the passenger of Houcine Hakkar, a 23-year-old mechanic shot with a final bullet in the head, after being chased in a car by killers, who misunderstood his identity.
During six minutes of recording, broadcast before the Doubs Assize Court, the passenger begs the police to help them. Tires screech, gunshots ring out. Then, nothing more.
A video taken by witnesses, also broadcast, shows that the killers’ car drove up to the damaged vehicle of the two young people, to execute the driver at point blank range. The passenger, hit by two projectiles, managed to flee. He will survive.
“The police officers witnessed the execution of Houcine Hakkar live (on the telephone, Editor’s note),” notes Ornella Spatafora, the passenger’s lawyer, present on the civil parties’ bench.
Houcine Hakkar’s family is in tears. His mother is evacuated from the audience. One of his sisters tells the accused, already convicted of drug trafficking: “You saw what you did, you are dogs”.
With a youthful face and carefully trimmed beard, Elias Basbas, 24, remains impassive in the dock. Melk Ghezali, 31, looks at his feet.
– Targeted in error –
These two men are both accused of having murdered Houcine Hakkar and of having attempted to murder his passenger.
“They didn’t know who they were shooting at”, they had the wrong car, the wrong target, according to the director of investigation. They were actually targeting a Parisian affiliated with the opposing clan.
Mohamed Mordjane, 31, on the run abroad and tried in absentia, is accused of complicity in murder. Designated as the leader of the clan that bears his name, he is suspected of having ordered the crime and facilitated its completion by providing weapons, a car and encrypted telephones to the killers.
The assassination of the young mechanic, completely unrelated to drug trafficking, marked the epilogue of five months of armed clashes between two rival gangs, the “Mordjane” and “Abdou” clans, who competed for the drug market in the sensitive district of Planoise, between November 2019 and March 2020.
These settling of scores, emblematic of the emergence of ultra-violent and increasingly young traffickers in medium-sized towns in France, also left a dozen injured, aged 14 to 31.
The three accused, already convicted multiple times for drug trafficking, aggravated violence and criminal conspiracy, face life imprisonment.
– Decrypted messaging –
“I recognize the facts with which I am accused,” declared Monday morning Melk Ghezali, suspected of being the driver, before apologizing to the civil parties. During the investigation, he maintained that he thought he was participating in intimidation shootings, not shootings to kill.
The attitude of his co-accused, suspected of being the shooter, is decisive. “I am innocent. I have nothing to do with the facts and I hope that this week I will be able to explain myself,” declared Elias Basbas with confidence, despite the decryption of his conversations with members of his clan.
At the time of the events, the criminals from Bison, like many French and European criminal groups, communicated freely with PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) telephones via Sky ECC encrypted messaging, believing themselves to be protected from police eavesdropping.
But in 2019, an investigation into this network was opened in Lille. All the conversations concerning the assassination of Houcine Hakkar were then deciphered and transmitted to the Besançon investigators.
“A man fell under the bullets. We stamped them, stamped them, they had an accident, and shot at point blank range in the head”, boast the alleged killers via a PGP telephone assigned by the head of investigation of the judicial police to Elias Basbas.
The Doubs Assize Court will deliver its verdict on Friday.
as/bar/dsa
