Sentenced to thirty years of criminal prison in February 2023, the Marseille native Kamel Meziani, who, according to the judicial police, would be among the important figures of French narco-bandism, was acquitted on Wednesday, November 13, by the Court of Appeal of Var. He was accused of having given instructions and provided assistance to the perpetrators of a double murder and an attempted murder, acts committed on October 21, 2016 in a context of rivalries over the management of a drug sales point in the city of Foca. .
The shooting, committed by two men on a scooter, cost the lives of two passengers in a vehicle parked in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant: the driver, a young paraplegic, and the rear passenger, wounded in the chest and killed. two bullets in the head. The latter had absolutely no relationship with drugs and was accidentally found in the vehicle of one of his childhood friends. The third occupant of the vehicle that the authors had treated “tick”, They saved his life by fleeing under intense fire from weapons of war.
The accusation against Kamel Meziani, 40, presented as head of the powerful narcotics network in the city of Oliviers A, was based mainly on the statements of a witness heard under two teams competing for the point of sale in the Mediterranean city . Although he admits to having been involved in trafficking in the past, Kamel Meziani has always questioned this role of leader and passing on instructions. The jurors of the Court of Criminal Appeals considered that the “confusing and poorly detailed accusations” issued by the anonymous witness “could not be corroborated by any tangible element”. According to his lawyers, Mare Keren Saffar, Raphaël Chiche and Thomas Bidnic, this faceless witness with a confused voice “He was not alone during his testimony but was accompanied by third parties, most likely police officers, who intervened when he was in difficulty”.
“Condemn an innocent person”
In its reasons, the Court of Criminal Appeals points out that “The investigation did not allow us to highlight how, when and to whom the authorization was granted. [de mener des représailles] “It would have been delivered by Kamel Meziani, leaving it at the hypothesis stage, not verified or verifiable.”. If the Aix-en-Provence juries considered, in 2023, that Kamel Meziani had also provided the perpetrators with a stolen scooter, weapons, ammunition, a beacon and a tablet to geolocate the victims’ vehicle, their Var counterparts estimated, on the contrary, that the accusation did not bring “no objective element that links him to these objects and, in particular, to the two weapons used by the murderers”.
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