Drug trafficking in Sète: a resident of the island of Thau tried for complicity in trafficking alongside dealers

The resident allowed the dealers to use her apartment for the modest sum of €10 to €20 per day. Midi Libre – Archive EVA TISSOT

Aged 52, she rented her apartment where weapons and drugs were stored. She explained herself this Monday, December 9 before the Montpellier judicial court. 

“I said to myself “why not, if it's just to sleep and then it wouldn't last!“” This is how this resident of the Thau Island district, aged 52, single and childless, living on €800 per month, let the wolf into the sheepfold. To make ends meet, she played the role of wet nurse for a network of drug dealers for a month.

On October 26, she was arrested in her apartment in the Sardinal residence, along with two dealers, while she was trying to get rid of a bag full of drugs through the window. Inside, a handgun (7.35 caliber) and drugs packaged for sale. During the search of the premises, investigators from the Sète narcotics squad would get their hands on 1.4 kg of cannabis resin, 327 g of grass and 330 g of cocaine. Another 6.35 caliber handgun would also be found at the scene. More than 2,000 euros will be seized from the main suspect in the trafficking, as he tried to hide the notes in his underwear.

Cleaning lady riddled with debt

An almost unexpected discovery for the police that day, when they had just apprehended a simple lookout, in possession of cocaine, at the bottom of the building. It was a resident, fed up with the trafficking, who reported the scheme, by sending a simple handwritten note to the officials, to give them the address of a woman “who hosts vendors”, he wrote.

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“It was to make a little money for myself, confided the tenant before the Montpellier judicial court on December 9, where she was being tried for complicity in drug trafficking, alongside two dealers. At the beginning, there were no drugs, no weapons […] I met a young man in the neighborhood who told me he was looking for a place to sleep”, continued this cleaning lady, riddled with debt. For €10 to €20 a day, she offered food and lodging to traffickers, like a poor man’s AirB&B.

“It’s naivety or rather easy money ?”

“It’s naivety or rather easy money ?”counters the prosecutor, while the defendant herself had admitted to investigators that she had noticed the presence of a drug dealing point in her stairwell. “You couldn't not know!”, affirmed the prosecutor, who requested a six-month prison sentence for this woman with no criminal record.

“Drug trafficking means insecurity, residents who can't stand seeing these dealers and the risks that this represents, like finding a bullet on your sofa!”, hammered the prosecution. The magistrate pointed out the responsibilities of each. The lookout from Toulouse, a young Algerian aged 22 in an irregular situation but without a criminal record. Having broken with his family, he had come to work for €120 per day. But above all, the most experienced of the group, a young Lyonnais aged 26, who has already spent eleven years behind bars. He was also on the run at the time of his arrest in Sète. Placed on parole for two weeks, while he was already serving a three-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, he had not returned to prison.

A dealer from Lyon on the run

In court, he acknowledged an important role in supervising the traffic from the apartment, between collecting funds, supplies, but also security knowing how to handle a handgun. “But don't call me a manager, I'm at the bottom of the ladder”, he says while the presiding judge tries to go into details. The latter was sentenced to two years in prison, six of which were suspended probation for two years. And six more months in prison for escape. The tenant and the lookout received the same eight-month suspended sentence. The former will have to pay a fine of €1,500.

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