THE SWEAT "JO LE BOXEUR"

JO ATTIA aka "JO le Boxeur

Joseph Brahim Attia, also known as Jo Attia, "Grand Jo", "Le Moko" or "Jo le Boxeur", was born on 10 June 1916 in La Richardais, Ille-et-Vilaine, and died on 22 July 1972 in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.

From an early age, Jo had a reputation as a brawler, not because he wanted to fight, but because he wanted to defend those who were beaten up because they were smaller or punier. Jo is already well built. He doesn't like injustice and knows how to use his fists.

Placed on farms, he ran away from home at the age of 14 and at a very young age became involved in all kinds of thefts and assaults in Lyon and Paris, where he hung out with the Bastille hoodlums. This earned him three minor convictions while he was still a minor, and a short career as a boxer, which was brought to an abrupt halt by the death of his mentor, "le Notaire", shot by a certain Vito the Sicilian, who ATTIA would settle with some time later.

In 1937 he landed in the terrible "Bat d'Af", the African battalions reserved for ex-convicts doing their military service, where he gained many tattoos and met Pierre LOUTREL, known as "Pierrot le Fou".

There, he became familiar with Bousille and returned tattooed from head to toe: broken chains on his ankles, a portrait of a woman on his back, a guillotine on his left arm and a prostitute on his right. On His body also reads: "Mauvaise Tête mais bon coeur" ("Bad head but good heart"), "Fais gaffe" ("Watch out") and "je t'ai vu" ("I saw you") on his knees. On his face, a cockroach, i.e. three dots. On his chest, three heads "Coeur de Voyou" - I believed, I loved, I suffered...

During the Occupation, he became involved in burglary and trafficking of all kinds, sometimes in collaboration with Charles Cazauba's "CARLINGUE" (French Gestapo), and ended up being deported to the Mathausen camp in 1943 under the number 34483, where he made friends with future leaders of the Fourth Republic. Back in Paris in '45, emaciated and exhausted, he met up with his friends and embarked with them on the legendary wild ride of Pierrot le Fou's GANG DES TRACTIONS AVANTS, an explosive mix of ex-collabos and ex-Resistance fighters (Abel DANOS known as "le Mammouth", George BOUCHESEICHE, Raymond NAUDY, Henri FEFEU known as "Riton le Tatoué") who, for two years, carried out a series of robberies of cash-in-transit companies and bloody shoot-outs - some fifteen men lost their lives, gangsters and policemen as well as employees.

Arrested in 1947, Jo Attia was released in '53 thanks to his political friendships, and went on to buy the "GAVROCHE" bar, a meeting place for the underworld and the Tout-Paris, run a luxury cabaret in Abidjan, open an estate agency and act as a spy for the secret service in Morocco.

Enjoying a powerful aura in the underworld thanks to his career and his charisma as an old-fashioned thug, he and his team of Parisians, many of whom hail from Belleville - the aptly-named Christian de Belleville, Roger Lentz dit Poupon, Didi la Mèche, Jean Palisse, Marcel Casadonte le Corse, Henri Ruiz dit le Gitan, Nottoni dit la Béquille... - began to act as 'godfathers', fining a number of thugs and extorting money from the local landlords. Not everyone was happy about this: one night, La Béquille, a barman-racker-prox who frequented the Gavroche, was shot dead by a team of Lyonnais; another time, an artist who had performed in the bar found Attia collapsed in his lift, shot in the stomach; in 1965, it was the young Michel Ardouin who shot Henri le Gitan six times in the body in Les Ternes... And in 1969, the terrible killing at Le Gavroche marked the end for Jo Attia: an uncontrollable young hold-up man, Christian Jubin, entered the kingpin's bar at around 3am, shot dead the barmaid and her boyfriend, then kidnapped and raped Grand Jo's daughter. He never recovered. He died of throat cancer in 1972. 

Jo spent a total of 21 years in prison, but his many connections earned him the greatest leniency from the courts, hence his nickname "The King of dismissed".