Marseille Narcotrafic Franchise Spreads Across France

The day's French agenda divided cleanly between an organised-crime story rooted in Marseille and the Franco-Algerian diplomacy it requires to dent. On franceinfo's 8h30 programme, investigative journalist Frédéric Ploquin told hosts Agathe Lambret and Paul Barcelonne that the Marseille narcotrafic model has metastasised into a national franchise. The DZ Mafia, he said, now operates "comme une espèce de licence" across French cities and suburbs, and the circulation of weapons had reached the point that "il y a quelque chose qui est hors de contrôle." Ploquin called the spread "un échec" of successive governments while crediting day-to-day police work: "L'État marque des points tous les jours." His interview aired the same morning the trial of the head of the rival Yoda clan opened in Marseille, three years after the 2023 feud between Yoda and the DZ Mafia.

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin flew to Algiers, the visible part of a tentative Franco-Algerian thaw driven by migration and security imperatives after months of cold relations. Ploquin used the same interview to argue Darmanin's trip was central to the drug fight: drug money flows abroad and the cartel bosses themselves are based outside France, where "ils s'entendent, ils s'accordent." He named former interior minister Bruno Retailleau as the figure who had "complètement fâchés" France with Algeria and called the fluidity of contacts between French and Algerian security services essential to French security itself.

In The Hague, the Scheveningen war-crimes prison confirmed the death of Felicien Kabuga at the age of 93. The alleged financier of the 1994 Rwandan genocide — captured in Asnières-sur-Seine outside Paris in 2020 after decades on the run — was never convicted: the IRMCT halted his trial in 2024 on grounds of dementia, leaving the foremost financial accusation in the genocide file legally unresolved at his death.

In the Assemblée, dozens of right-wing députés signed a text calling for a parliamentary inquiry into rising pump prices and the effectiveness of state aid, framing the Strait of Hormuz crisis through a domestic-political lens. Ploquin closed the loop on a third running file in the same interview, attacking the pace of the French Epstein investigation: Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau had publicly raised "une dizaine" of new alleged victims on May 17, and Ploquin said French justice had been "beaucoup trop lente, beaucoup trop longue à se mettre en marche." He said he had himself "retrouvé toutes les victimes" — minors, mostly aged 17 to 18, foreign nationals isolated in Paris — and traced the predators.