Shooting in broad daylight, baby-spacies, IMAM involved: crime is reorganized in Grenoble after the end of the Italian clans. The complete reportage.
Gusts of Kalashnikov in broad daylight, on the highway that from Grenoble to tip towards Turin: a spectacular murder that shocked France for its ways. The name of the victim to many now said nothing, but it was the last leader of the Italian underworld in the Alpine capital, Jean-Pierre Maldera.
A long criminal affair ended a few weeks ago. However, there is another that has the colors of the emergency. It must be said that Grenoble lives well. Especially in these days, with an already hot spring, the bars with the outdoor tables, the walks on the riverside and the tourists mixing with eco-friendly managers, researchers and students from all over the world. A university campus of 40 thousand students works on a population of 150 thousand inhabitants. The mayor, Eric Piolle, has been guiding a red-green coalition for eleven years and must be proud of the cultural and environmental situation of the city … yet, in the center, in the area of rue hoche, he sells drugs in the light of the sun: «It is a nerve point, that. Because it is easily accessible and the drug dealers come to us from the neighborhoods »explains Eric Vaillant, Grenoble prosecutor until last February. «On the other hand it is a somewhat anomalous city. With a small central nucleus and then, very quickly, you come across the “towers”, those large blocks of apartments, and you have the impression that the suburbs is inside the city. And there is the tram that goes everywhere, so even traffickers circulate without problems, now also with scooters. It is then clear that Grenoble is an area with a large catchment area ».
The Municipality is twinned with Corato, one of the main sources of immigration: it is said that Coratini live more here than in Puglia. Italian immigration is an ancient story, in the first post -war period it became intense: families of workers who initially crowded in Rue Saint Laurent, an unconscious area crushed as it is between the river and the mountains.
Of that “Little Italy” today in the Alpine capital there remains a long parade of restaurants on the rowing that serve our cuisine. The Maldera family also came from Corato: the father, Vincent, decorated with the legion of honor for the activity in the Resistance, had networks both in France and in Italy. From him the children, Robert and Jean-Pierre, took and learned a lot. However, adapting the paramilitary techniques to other purposes. “The Italians had a more numerous manovalanza, and little by little have replaced the courses and the gypsies” says Eric Merlen, former investigative journalist, author of books and documentaries on the clans of Grenoble and contact person of the Geopolitical Observatory of drugs and the French anti -mafia commission. The Maldera until a few years ago were the most feared and respected. Extortion, prostitution, then slot machines, scams and more, passing through some murder. Then Robert disappeared into thin air, ten years ago. And with the assassination of Jean-Pierre-on 12 March last, precisely on the highway-an already old story ended.
The clans of the “Italian-Grénoblois” have not been talked about for years: they have been progressively replaced by the lean bands strongly rooted in the “Cité”, the difficult neighborhoods. Where life flows relatively normal, also made of generosity and an active volunteering, but is interrupted by increasingly frequent shootings and asphyxiated by poverty and control of clans. Who earn above all with drugs. The career begins early: “14-15 years old kids collect 50 euros per day to report every movement” says Merlen. «Then it is a chain: the older ones intervene, over the age of 18, paid 100 per day. Then they, if you want drugs, take you to another boy, who is paid about 200 euros per day. In turn, this introduces you to another who asks what kind of stuff you want, takes the money, goes from the drug dealer and finally makes the delivery ».
Oiled mechanisms that are repeated on about twenty “squares”: make more than 300 thousand euros per day. About ten million a month. And they do not hide: each million accumulated is celebrated with fireworks. Even when last February the French interior minister Bruno Rétailleau arringa the police forces, a video posted on social networks showed the shop scenes with two isolated from the barracks … Then there are spectacular raids, such as the car launched last February against the new library in the Mistral district, given on fire. A clear message: “The neighborhood is ours”.
The clans know each other and sometimes they alleviate themselves, even peaceful weddings intertwine, but they also fight for the control of the territory. In relation to the population there are now more regulations of accounts than in Marseille: about twenty shootings in the first ten months of 2024, already reached in the first three months of this year. Not to mention the grenade launched in a bar, with 15 injured.
It is a war fueled by several factors, according to Vaillant: the main one would be the killing of Mehdi Boulenouane in May 2024. The Caïd was considered, the boss of the Mistral shop center. Released from the assassins just two months later, on the outskirts of Paris: on the street, in broad daylight. Two years ago a couple of slightly older traffickers had also been released who reconstituted their gangs and try to recover a portion of the city. The arrests are not rare, nor the sentences. But they destabilize. «For example, in November 2023 we sent the main managers of the large centers of the Alma of the Alma into jail. Immediately afterwards a series of shootings occurred in that area ». The drug plant, made so more fragile, began to throat to other bands. “The drug trafficking is very profitable and therefore the appetites are fierce and people want to take their slice at any cost, with heinous violence, also using minors for assaults”.
The intertwining are even more disturbing: in prison they hold relationships with other groups, and in the neighborhoods some imams let themselves be involved. “The fact is that they are all linked by an ethnic, geographical, religious origin,” adds Merlen. «We must not generalize, but often the first place where the drug is hidden is in the house of a religious, or even in a mosque. There are Wahabite networks: for example, Khaled Kelkal (the mind of serious attacks in France in 1995, editor’s note) at a certain point was a guest of a Wahabita association here in Echirolles. If we then think of the attacks in France in 2015, from the investigations it appears that the suspects of terrorism had all already been identified by children, involved in the 2005 district riots ». Therefore, the bands of the Grenoble neighborhoods, without a centralized structure, can however take advantage of networks capable of coordinating. And it is a dangerous cocktail of money, ideology and despair.
