International Journal on Criminology Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2015 | Page 32

Organized Crime Behind Bars
another accomplice in charge of a vehicle authorized to circulate within, and leave, the
airport zone.
To reassure the drug traffickers, Boubacar Ba would designate what was termed
“human security” from among the members of his network in Colombia. If the drugs
were lost, the Colombians were empowered to take their revenge by eliminating this
person. This seems to have happened. A suitcase was seized by customs, and in retaliation
the Colombians executed their hostage, whose body was discovered a few months later
on the outskirts of Bogota. When another consignment was stolen, this time in France,
the network meted out correctional measures to the thief, probably torturing him until
he returned the drugs and “disappeared” into the wild.
Denounced by one of his own “mules” in February 2004, Boubacar Ba was
immediately wire-tapped. Investigators discovered a traffic with multiple ramifications,
involving several international “delegates” in Holland, Switzerland, and Benin. Most of
his accomplices, identified one after another, were former prisoners who knew Ba in
prison.
During his trial, the “Papa” acknowledged having been the boss of several “teams”
instructed “to organize the import of large quantities of cocaine from Colombia” He was
sentenced to twelve years in prison. In his cell in Meaux, then Val-de-Reuil, he continued
his activities after lights-out, making dozens of phone calls to France, the Netherlands
and Africa. He even managed to hide the fact that he was languishing behind bars from
his contacts.
And in 2008 he would begin all over again, organizing traffic from these same
prison cells.
In December 2011, the Paris Criminal Court examined his case for three weeks.
The prosecution demanded eighteen years imprisonment, a minimum of two-thirds to
be served, to be followed by permanent exclusion from French territory, as a Guinean
national. It seems he had little chance of seeing his four wives, his eighteen children and
sixty-seven grandchildren ever again.
More recently...
After six months of investigation, the criminal police in Agen, a town in the
southwest of France dismantled a cocaine and ecstasy trafficking network being managed
from a prison at Eysses.
Seven people were arrested. 1.1 kilograms of cocaine, 5,000 ecstasy pills and
15,500 Euros were seized. The network's boss, born in 1979, had been locked-up for
a previous case involving some 5 kg of cocaine. He oversaw the network from his cell
where he had a number of mobile phones, which he changed regularly to avoid detection.
His brother, born in 1989, was among those arrested.
Finally, there is another symptomatic fact we may consider. In November 9, 2010
it was reported that a search of certain cells at Muret Prison 23 (in the Haute-Garonne
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Muret detention center, located in the southern suburbs of Toulouse, was commissioned in 1966. It
houses some 625 inmates on long sentences, with a total of 634 places. It has 15,000 m² of workshops
with modern equipment, including CNC machines used in particular in the manufacture of parts for
the aerospace and furniture industries.
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