u/mrnobody0013

Hey!

On this subreddit, we rarely hear about organized crime, and even less about French gangsters. In recent years, a drug trafficking gang called the “DZ Mafia,” born in Marseille (a city in southern France), has spread terror across France: murders, drug trafficking, threats against law enforcement, etc.

In 2025, the group even carried out attacks aimed at intimidating the French prison administration. Several prisons were targeted by arson attacks against prison guards’ vehicles, notably in Agen and Marseille, while Toulon-La Farlède prison was hit by Kalashnikov-style automatic gunfire at its entrance. Other actions included graffitis found on prison buildings, drones flying over prisons, and intimidation of prison staff near their homes.

Last March, two major DZ Mafia leaders were put on trial : Gabriel Ory (a white Frenchman) and Amine Oualane (a Frenchman of Algerian origin). During the trial, a lot of attention was given to the defendants’ personalities and life paths, and I found this analysis particularly fascinating. It’s really interesting to understand how “drug lords” are shaped and produced.

So I juste want to share with you two translations of French newspaper articles written during the trial :

Article 1 — “Lack of money destroyed my life”: the upbringing of Gabriel Ory and Amine Oualane, alleged bosses of the DZ Mafia (Le Parisien)

The defendant barely knew his father — if at all. He was only three days old when his mother fled hundreds of kilometers away with her baby in her arms. Jean-Louis, this father described as violent and alcoholic, briefly reappeared in the little boy’s life when he was three years old, just long enough to give him a necklace with a medallion depicting… a cannabis leaf.

The special education worker recounting this anecdote before the Aix-en-Provence criminal court then went on to describe the life of Gabriel Ory, 31, one of the alleged leaders of the DZ Mafia, who is being tried alongside five other men for a double murder carried out by an organized gang in 2019.

The overweight thirty-year-old with a receding hairline presents journalists with the unreadable appearance of an ordinary man, with no real distinguishing features except perhaps the restless movement in his eyes, giving the impression that he thinks more than he moves. His longtime friend, Amine Oualane, sitting two seats away in the defendants’ box, is the complete opposite: thin where the other is heavy, dark, tense, olive-skinned. He is another alleged leader of the Marseille clan with mafia ambitions, born in the early 2020s from the ruins of a ruthless victorious war against the Yoda clan.

Examining their personalities during the first days of the trial raises the question of how much delinquency is a predetermined path. “Do you know Bourdieu?” a lawyer asked a psychologist in court, in what sounded like an obvious point being dramatically emphasized. The sociologist of social reproduction could easily have used Oualane’s case as an example. Known as “Mamine,” he grew up in the shadow of the housing projects of Marseille’s northern districts, in an environment marked by every kind of hardship — financial, social, and emotional.

Yet while these weaknesses may help explain entry into delinquency, they do not fully explain the extraordinary criminal scale and extreme violence that became the trademark of the supposed leaders of Marseille’s gang with hegemonic ambitions. Proof that there are exceptions to every rule, Adrien Faure — also on trial and accused of acting as an enforcer in the 2019 double murder — grew up in a modest but stable family environment, perhaps even excessively structured in the eyes of the eldest son.

His Senegalese immigrant parents carefully saved part of their welfare benefits every month into savings accounts for their children in order to secure their future. But Faure, attracted by designer clothes and luxury cars, found drug dealing to be a faster route to wealth. Even moving the family to a neighborhood less affected by trafficking changed nothing.

Zaineddine Ahamada, another alleged hitman involved in the killings, reportedly told investigators that he was “in drugs” the same way others are “in finance.” According to investigators, he “went from lookout to dealer, then manager” of a drug dealing spot. “He talks about this business like it’s a company. He recites his résumé,” one investigator noted.

Suspected of standing at the very top of the DZ Mafia hierarchy and killing in order to rule, Amine Oualane stole food as a child, left largely on his own with a suicidal mother addicted to medication. At 11, he was placed with his father, whose “educational methods were inappropriate, even violent.” His two older brothers were sent elsewhere. At school, “Mamine” was described as “aggressive.” By 15, he spent most of his time in the streets. At 17, delinquency somehow enabled him to rent his own apartment. At 18, it sent him to prison — a place he would barely leave afterward, except during a months-long escape during which authorities suspect him of participating in four assassination plots. A personality investigator noted one of his statements: “Lack of money killed my life.”

Gabriel Ory shared with his friend the absence of an authority figure during early childhood, poverty, and life in a troubled housing project — La Visitation, in his case. In the ghetto, his very French-sounding name was not an advantage. Diagnosed as hyperactive as a child, he struggled to “find his place” and rejected school, which in turn rejected him. His relationship with his severely disabled mother, who “tried by every means” to keep him away from bad influences — even sending him to live with an uncle in southwestern France — appears deeply conflictual in the background. He “spent some time in foster homes.” He ran away. Nobody looked for him. At 16, he “became involved in dealing” and “sank deeper into the underworld.” His first armed robbery, which earned him a five-year prison sentence before a juvenile court, was reportedly motivated by the need to repay a debt.

By the time personality investigators interviewed him, Ory had already risen through the ranks of organized crime. He was considered one of the three alleged leaders of the DZ Mafia. He had stopped accepting prison visits from relatives “so as not to burden them,” he later explained.

To the psychiatrist who interviewed him, “Gaby” — his nickname — revealed very little. Childhood and family seemed to be subjects he preferred to keep secret. He only shared banal details: that he liked soccer and considered himself “reserved” and “organized.” Psychiatric evaluations, both for him and for Amine Oualane, revealed no medical disorders.

In his corner of the defendants’ box, Gabriel Ory stopped looking around the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon. Holding a blue pen, he wrote on the railing in front of him as if it were a desk. “I’m preparing my defense, since I wasn’t able to do it before,” he told the court — a jab referring to the detention conditions he described as “inhumane,” linked to his status as a high-risk organized crime inmate.

But he would not be allowed to speak until the following day, Wednesday evening, unexpectedly and for the first time since the trial began.

Article 2 — Hard childhood, crime, and lack of empathy : inside the psychology of the DZ Mafia leaders (Le Point)

The Aix-en-Provence criminal court examined the personalities of the five defendants being tried in connection with the double murder that took place in Marseille’s northern suburbs in 2019. Their backgrounds reveal vulnerabilities that may help explain their entry into delinquency — though not necessarily the level ultimately reached by the two alleged DZ Mafia bosses.

On the second day of hearings, Tuesday, experts explained to the court how Amine Oualane and Gabriel Ory drifted into delinquency during adolescence.

Their entry into adulthood happened in prison. Gabriel Ory was 17 when he was sentenced to six years in prison for armed robbery. Amine Oualane was also first imprisoned for robbery, at age 18. Since then, the man considered one of the leaders of the DZ Mafia has spent almost his entire life behind bars — 13 years in total. Alongside Gabriel Ory, himself suspected of being a high-ranking member of the DZ, the two friends entered violent criminality at a very early age. Yet their paths into delinquency developed in different contexts.

The man known as “Mamine” in criminal circles grew up in what investigators described as a “fairly unstable” household. His mother separated from her husband because of domestic violence. She herself was psychologically fragile, had attempted suicide several times, and was reportedly “unable to provide a secure environment for her children,” according to the personality investigator’s report presented before the court on March 24. Since Monday, the court has been hearing a three-week trial concerning a double murder committed in a hotel in the Plan-de-Campagne commercial zone in August 2019.

“Mamine’s” mother subjected him to physical abuse and severe neglect. The situation became serious enough for a juvenile judge to intervene and educational assistance measures to be imposed, revealing “parental failure,” situations of confinement, lack of food, and repeated violence. Bruises were found on the child. Violence inflicted with objects or cables led to official reports. This same violence later resurfaced at school, directed at classmates, but also at his mother and brothers. “He is distrustful, not very expressive, and has developed a kind of shell,” the investigator explained. “Violence seems normalized in the way he functions. He appears to have experienced it and reproduced it.”

In conflict with authority, he changed significantly during middle school. He dropped out in the equivalent of 8th grade with no qualifications. According to the investigator, this period marked the beginning of his downward spiral: “He spent his days in the streets with people already involved in delinquency.” At 17, he somehow managed to get his own apartment, though he never explained how he paid for it. “From adolescence onward, he seemed attracted to fast and easy money,” she continued. “He sought financial independence and rejected traditional paths of social integration. He wanted to escape the family home.” He himself reportedly said: “Lack of money killed my life. I wanted what I didn’t have as a child. […] It makes no sense — you don’t become rich by going to school.”

His lawyer, Inès Medioune, argued that this “desire for independence” was actually “a survival strategy”: “The extreme poverty was such that his mother couldn’t even feed her children, which pushed him to steal. We’re talking about a lack of basic necessities, not a desire for a Gucci bag!” That is how his first thefts, robberies, and prison sentence began. He later escaped during temporary release and entered a wandering, highly precarious period of his life, about which he said: “I went through hell, I had forgotten what life was like. […] It took me a month to adapt.” What did he mean by “went through hell” — suffering or enjoying himself? “A bit of both,” his lawyer replied. He seemed eager to answer himself from the defendants’ box, but the judge did not give him the opportunity.

The same tension emerged when the psychologist described him as lacking empathy, intolerant of frustration, possessing little introspective ability, and displaying antisocial personality traits. His lawyer argued that this could simply reflect a need to appear strong and to hide emotions because of a dangerous family environment. “I felt no human warmth, no kindness, no desire to connect with others,” the psychologist replied. “I found him cold. This is not a defense mechanism but an absence of emotion. His mother’s death did not appear to affect him.”

Shocked, his lawyer responded that losing his mother was the greatest trauma of his life. “I can usually observe suffering or anger,” the psychologist explained. “Here, there was very little emotion — a profound emotional deficiency. The person in front of me appeared dangerous because of these emotional and affective deficiencies and his lack of empathy.” At that point, the defendant, who had been signaling for several minutes that he wanted to speak, lost his temper. He stood up and shouted: “We’re going to stop this trial — you’ll do it without us.” A courtroom incident followed. After several interruptions the previous day, the presiding judge expelled him from the courtroom for the rest of the afternoon. He was expected to testify the following morning.

Gabriel Ory, nicknamed “Gaby,” also did not get the opportunity to speak about his personality. His mother left his father three days after his birth, believing he was incapable of raising him. Proof? At age three, the child returned from a visit wearing a necklace with a cannabis leaf medallion. His mother “fled,” trying to disappear for fear he would find them again. She eventually settled in La Visitation, a housing project in Marseille’s northern districts. “With a very French-sounding name, in that neighborhood, amid delinquency and immigration, his arrival was complicated,” the personality investigator explained. “He had to find his niche. […] He had to assert himself without a father figure. He always struggled with authority and constantly challenged it. […] Distrust toward authority is also part of the culture of his environment.”

School was difficult for him as well. Diagnosed with hyperactivity, he received treatment for it. His mother claimed he had been bullied by his elementary school principal. In middle school, he was expelled and forced to change schools. Even then, his mother noticed that some of his acquaintances were trying to pull him into delinquency. Disabled at 80%, she insisted she had done everything she could to keep him afloat. “She was overwhelmed,” the psychiatrist noted. She sent him to live with his uncle in an attempt to pull him out of the spiral and contacted social services. At one point, he reportedly experienced a breakdown, spoke about suicidal thoughts, and grabbed a knife. He was hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of La Timone hospital.

In high school, he disengaged completely, started skipping classes, and eventually dropped out. “He had desires and needs, and his family was poor. He started dealing drugs to make money,” the investigator explained. “It allowed him to have activities and a lifestyle somewhat similar to others. He said he liked money.”

He sank deeper into delinquency and later claimed that he needed to repay a debt. To do so, he committed robberies, armed thefts, and violent assaults. He nevertheless insisted to investigators that he never intended to use weapons and only carried them to intimidate people, whether the guns were unloaded or fake. During one robbery, he himself was shot.

According to the psychiatrist, he showed no real questioning of his own behavior and tended to blame others. She observed “psychopathic traits in his personality, though not enough clinical evidence to formally characterize a psychopathic personality.” He appeared angry toward the person he believed had “orchestrated” his implication in the current case: “I can’t accept it. I won’t do anything because I’m not a savage, but I cannot accept it.” He told the expert he was innocent and had been falsely accused.

When the psychiatrist met him in 2020, he refused visits from relatives “because he believed he had already caused too much damage in their lives […] and did not want to impose an additional mental burden on them.” Between ages 17 and 23, he had known almost nothing except prison. “He wasn’t influenced into this path — he takes responsibility for it,” the investigator concluded. “He never grabbed the lifelines that were available to him.”