Spanish National Police arrested Walid Bara, alias "Fondu", a senior leader of the DZ Mafia (a Marseille-based drug trafficking organisation that has become a major security concern for the French government), in the centre of Madrid on Tuesday night. The 40-year-old had been living in a rented apartment near Plaza de la Cruz Verde under false French documents, keeping no contact with neighbours or family and rarely leaving home, in an effort to avoid detection over the two years since he fled France. His arrest came just hours after a French court convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison for a double murder at a Marseille hotel in 2019; he faces four separate European arrest warrants and had been a fugitive since May 2024, when a series of procedural errors led to his release from custody despite being implicated in four cases, three involving killings.