The scene is set in a fixed frame, with a dark interior. The video shows about 15 hooded men, all dressed in black, standing in a tight formation around their leader. He is posted behind a makeshift altar covered with a white sheet emblazoned with their label, "DZ MAFIA," in bold capital letters. When the leader speaks, his voice is digitally altered to sound cavernous. Surprisingly, he is not invoking a black mass or making any kind of threat; the group is filming itself to expose the usurpation of its "brand."
In this disconcerting press conference, broadcast on social media on Wednesday, October 9, the Marseille-based criminal group denied having given a mandate to the 14-year-old teenager who killed a private hire driver in Marseille on October 4 – yet another collateral victim of drug trafficking. The man who ordered the killing, held in Aix-Luynes prison north of Marseille, claimed to belong to the DZ Mafia. "We have enough men, vehicles and means to act if we had to," said the man speaking on the video, anxious to restore the criminal organization's tarnished image.
Set against a backdrop reminiscent of clandestine organizations, this speech does not reinforce the power of a long-established hierarchical clan, but it does highlight the alarming lightning rise of a criminal enterprise with ambitions of dominance. The DZ Mafia "brand" first came to the attention of investigators barely a year and a half ago when it appeared in a social media post. At the time, the group did not shy away from its use of violence. In March 2023, images of the burning body of a victim killed in La Busserine, a housing estate in Marseille's 14th arrondissement, were accompanied by the name DZ Mafia. "DZ" stands for Dzayir, meaning "Algeria" in Arabic.
The DZ Mafia first gained public attention with the murder of the private hire driver, followed by the enigmatic press conference. However, the people of Marseille had been hearing about the group almost every week throughout 2023, as the city experienced 49 homicides linked to drug trafficking that year, with over 80% of them attributed to the DZ Mafia. Many were carried out by young recruits, recruited via Snapchat, mercenaries who sometimes come from middle-class families. One boy, for example, was recruited as a driver. Three or four murders later, he decided to leave the gang because it was starting to be "a little too many dead." Above all, he explained in police custody, he had reached the sum he had set himself: €20,000. "With the money, I bought the car and some clothes."
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