Marseille: up to 20 years in prison for the kidnapping of a lookout saved from death by a jammed weapon

The Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court on Tuesday sentenced three men to sentences ranging from 12 to 20 years of criminal imprisonment for the kidnapping of a young lookout who had miraculously escaped death following the malfunction of the weapon pointed at his head.

On June 21, 2021, in a context of war between clans for control of the so-called “Maga” deal point in the Marseille town of La Paternelle, a young 23-year-old worker, hired to act as a lookout, was violently thrown into a car trunk then transported to the hills near a recycling center.

There, the kidnappers questioned him about his employers before shooting him in the leg. But the weapon, then pointed at his head for a second shot, had jammed. A video made for social networks shows the terror of the young victim who never heard from the justice system again. Broadcast to the audience, this video allowed us to hear the jeers of the jailers: “Oh, by God, you have ass, it stopped.” Before their departure, his attackers forced him to strip naked.

Arrested the same evening, Seyni Demba, already convicted in 2016 for settling scores, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the assassination attempt. He had not returned to prison since April after being granted leave to visit his sick mother. Bilel Chabane, who held the weapon, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Yacine Ouertani, the commando driver, to 12 years.

The court rejected the reclassification into aggravated voluntary violence that the defense requested, the accused denying any intention to kill. Their goal was, according to their defense, a “jambization”, aimed at inflicting a correction and giving “the fear of his life” to a worker from the competing team. “The video does not allow us to determine the direction of the weapon, we do not see the shooter, we do not see the weapon,” pleaded Me Olivier Rosato and Anaïs Maadjel, Seyni Demba’s defenders.

To establish the homicidal intent of the trio, the attorney general relied in particular on the comments made by the victim to the very first responders on the scene to whom she had told that the perpetrators had tried to shoot her a second time in the head. Described as the “Fire” team responsible for the violent actions of the clan, the accused worked for a sponsor nicknamed “Honey” who the investigation did not formally identify.