Offensive tags and two 9 mm bullets bearing the signature of DZ Mafia. It was the unpleasant surprise that awaited the wife of the LR mayor of Alès (Gard), Christophe Rivenq, at their home on Thursday July 16. Since then, Laurent Nuñez has spoken with the councilor on the telephone, and requested protection for his family and the deployment of the CRS84 company in the city to strengthen the police presence.
Since the summer of 2025, the Marseille criminal group DZ Mafia has burst into Alès, a town of 46,000 inhabitants, where it is trying, as elsewhere, to supplant local networks.
An investigation into death threats and intimidation was opened and entrusted to the Alès police station as well as to the Gard directorate for the fight against organized crime and specialized delinquency (DCOS). The Alès prosecutor, Abdelkrim Grini, specified, in an interview with France 3 Occitanie, that “the inscriptions are signed “DZ NG”, therefore DZ Mafia new generation” and “CVN for Cévennes”.
Multiplication of incidents
The mayor of Alès, recalled the prosecutor, “has very often distinguished himself by coming to support the prosecution, in support of the national police, and I think that these words, these actions which were also decisive in the fight against drug trafficking, would explain why he is today the victim of threats”.
Friday July 17, several elected officials from the region, such as the mayors of Sète and Nîmes, expressed their support for their counterpart. The president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga (PS), welcomed the commitment of “all elected officials who, every day, enforce public authority and fight against drug trafficking. Faced with intimidation and violence from criminal networks, the Republic must never back down.”
At the beginning of June, an 18-year-old young man was shot and killed in the Prés-Saint-Jean district, plagued by drug trafficking where violent incidents have increased in recent weeks.
