He was one of the most awaited fugitives by the judges responsible for the fight against drug trafficking: the Marseillais Karim Harrat, 34, was handed over to the French authorities on Tuesday February 14. He was arrested on November 14, 2021, at Casablanca airport, on the basis of a European arrest warrant. The Moroccan extradition procedure will have lasted more than a year and aimed at its possible involvement in four cases of settling of accounts having made a total of seven dead, intentional homicides in an organized gang committed between December 2018 and December 2020. The judicial system of the one nicknamed “Le Rent” or “Arafat” promises to be dense in the coming weeks.
As soon as he arrives in France, he should be taken to the Paris court, to the office of the examining magistrate Matthieu Bonduelle who is investigating the assassination of Florent N’Gondo. This 30-year-old Marseillais had succumbed, on December 2, 2018 around 2 a.m., to twenty-five shots from automatic weapons, at the exit of a shisha bar on 20e district of Paris.
Present in the capital for the recording of an album by the Marseille rapper Elams, which he produced, Florent N’Gondo would have been asked by Karim Harrat, who was going to settle in Dubai, to manage “the stores”, one of the three drug sales outlets located in the Marseille city of La Paternelle. He could have been killed for not having paid his due to Karim Harrat, according to one of the tracks explored by the investigation.
Meteoric rise
His rise in the world of drugs is presented as dazzling, like these young traffickers in a hurry who are impatient to play the leading roles and snatch the deal points with Kalashnikovs. His criminal record reflects a small past as a bank card thief after being seen, without being worried, in the early 2010s in the shadow of traffic in the Bassens housing estate, one of the most important in Marseille. With the arrest of the leaders for a triple settling of accounts, he will climb the ladder four to four. According to “Tatoo”, the nickname of a trafficker who multiplies accusations and confessions, “Today, the head of the pyramid is Karim Harrat, but at that time, he was still the dog of the gang. That’s why it’s called Rantanplan or Le Rent”.
Settled in Dubai where he would have acquired a house, living at high speed like many drug barons who have taken refuge in the United Arab Emirates, Karim Harrat is suspected of having pulled the strings of young teams eager to “own” a network, their Holy Grail . “Tatoo” explained to the judges these foreign-driven drug turf wars: “They send young kids to the fire and they see what happens. If that doesn’t work, too bad, it’s the little kids who get killed. [Les jeunes] are oblivious, they idolize [les barons]. »
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