A 15-year-old teenager and a 36-year-old VTC driver were killed in recent days in Marseille amid drug trafficking. While the sponsor claims to be from the DZ Mafia, the clan published a video this Wednesday, October 9 to denounce the situation and claim to have no link with these murders.
“This man, sick and mythomaniac, (…) has absolutely no connection with us.” In a video posted on social networks, members of the Marseille drug trafficking clan DZ Mafia assured this Wednesday, October 9 that they had “no link” with the two murders that occurred in the Marseille city on October 2 and 4.
A video, nearly 1min30 long, authenticated by BFMTV as coming from the DZ Mafia by several police and field sources. Following the broadcast of this video, the Marseille prosecutor’s office indicated that it had opened an investigation into the leaders of “criminal associations with a view to preparing crimes and offenses relating to criminality”.
“We don’t know him, we have never had such a person in our circle,” says the masked man, reading the drug traffickers’ press release in a distorted voice.
According to them, the alleged sponsor “posing as a member of the DZ Mafia”. It was he who recruited the 14-year-old hitman to take revenge for the assassination of a 15-year-old young man on October 2, whose body was found stabbed and partly charred, and which also led to the death of Nessim Ramdane, the 36-year-old VTC driver shot dead on October 4 while running a race.
“Restoring the truth”
In the video, the clan’s spokesperson denounces this situation and says he hopes “that never again will a 14 or 15 year old child be involved in such stories, as a victim or a culprit”.
“Our name has become a brand used by many malicious, ill-intentioned people who have absolutely no connection with us,” the group’s spokesperson explains in the video.
And to continue: “the operating mode does not correspond in any way, the 14 year old child as well as the use of VTC to commit a crime has nothing to do with our methods. We have enough men, vehicles and means to act if we were obliged to do so.
A 23-year-old man, detained at the Aix-Luynes penitentiary center, is at the heart of two sinister cases in Marseille in recent days. If his criminal record is “serious”, the man claiming to be from the DZ Mafia was “not known on the radar to be at the top of the pyramid”.
The “most visible” network in Marseille
The DZ Mafia is a nebula of several leaders, who were traffickers already before the appearance of the name and who united. A source close to the matter described it to BFMTV as a protean criminal organization, overlooked by a dome, made up of several leaders.
Difficult to estimate the number of their members and affiliates. “Several hundred” for a source close to the file at our branch. The heads of the network “would be between five and 10” according to another source.
“Today, it is not the biggest network in Marseille but it is the most visible” confides a police officer familiar with Marseille affairs at the microphone of BFMTV.
A clan, whose war over drug trafficking in Marseille, made it a victim of its success. Delinquents and criminals “make believe that they are from the DZ Mafia (…) to benefit from the fear and fear that this network causes”, explains a source close to Marseille circles.
According to the Marseille prosecutor’s office at BFMTV, 47 narchomicides were recorded in 2023 in Bouches-du-Rhône.
Maxime Brandstaetter and Stéphane Sellami with AL
