Drug trafficking is plaguing the northern districts of Marseille, where settling of scores, which now affects young adolescents, is on the increase. Red Line journalists were able to film from the inside this internal war ravaging the Marseille city. An investigation by Benoît Sarrade, Baptiste Keita, Hugues Dugué, with Amélie Rosique and Elodie Noiret.
In the heart of summer, the city of Marseille was marked by an unprecedented series of settling of scores against the backdrop of drug trafficking. In the space of two weeks, six people were killed and, in a period of just two months, the death toll of 2020 was exceeded, with 25 homicides. During a press conference, Dominque Laurens, prosecutor for the Marseille city, denounced “an explosion in the number of cases in two months.”
More and more violent and numerous homicides
Among the cases that have deeply marked public opinion, the disappearance of young Rayanne, a young teenager of only 14 years old killed in the city of Marronniers. On the air at BFMTV, his aunt, Laetitia, had assured that the young victim was “‘not a dealer or a lookout”, “he was in school. He had just gone to enjoy a summer evening by going eat a sandwich with a friend at the foot of the city, “an assertion later confirmed by the police.
A few days later, the horrifying video of a kidnapping in the middle of the Marseille street by a commando had been shared. Despite his pleas, the 27-year-old man was found a few hours later, the body charred, in the vehicle that had been used for his kidnapping. Unheard of in Marseille.
Youssef, for his part, is a miracle. Nicknamed the Immortal, a pseudonym also given to one of the heroes of the series Gomorrah, he tells BFMTV to have been targeted by several shots in August 2021 while going to a cafe near his home. After receiving a bullet from Kalashnikov, the latter manages to turn the weapon against his attacker before being targeted by a second gunman who hits him three times in the chest. After several days in intensive care, Youssef finally got out of it, unlike his first attacker, who succumbed to his injuries. The second shooter was not arrested.
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Small hands in the network
In fact, these tragedies almost all take place in what is commonly called the “northern districts” of Marseille, namely the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth arrondissements of the city, where 250,000 people live in a poor environment. more often poor and difficult. There, a hundred points of deals are listed, of which the five most important represent a turnover of 50,000 to 80,000 euros per day.
To keep these juicy businesses running, network managers no longer hesitate to call on smaller and younger hands, most often minors. “Like all young people, we need money, we see others who dress well, our parents do what they can, but they cannot buy us everything”, assures Rayanne, 14 years old, lookout at proximity to a deal point, which has a completely normal view of its “job.” “The media talk about 5,000 euros a month but that has nothing to do with it, people think it’s easy, but it’s hard, you are bored, you work for 100 euros a day.”
“Sometimes we have young people who believe they are doing well by joining a drug trafficking network, they have a job, schedules, they get up in the morning, it is the business that works in the city. . He is normalizing and for him it is normal to have money, ”confirms Karine Sabvourin, Marseille magistrate.
An extremely difficult situation for the youngest, especially since during times of tension between different neighborhoods, and therefore different dealers, it is the latter who are targeted as a priority. To send a message, most often, but also because the heads of the networks for their part remain sheltered. They are thus much more difficult to eliminate for their rivals.
Police war
In parallel with the war between dealers, the police are also trying to stem the advance of drug trafficking in Marseille. However, the shelling strategy launched in 2020 does not seem to bear fruit entirely since since that date, the number of deal points has increased from 156 to 160, according to the narcotics brigade.
It must be said that these extremely well organized deal points operate like any other SME, with a well-established hierarchy which is most often divided into four parts. At first, the little hands, the lookouts also called “chouffe”, the coal miners, those who carry the drugs, the cutters, whom we see less often, and the network leaders who organize everything. If one of the first two floors of this pyramid falls, they are immediately replaced, which makes the task of law enforcement extremely difficult.
However, sometimes the police strike much harder than others. In 2013, in the district of La Castellane, where its point of deal weighed 2,000 daily customers, 28 people were arrested, as well as weapons and 100 kilos of drugs seized, as well as the astounding sum of 1.3 million d euros in cash.
At the head of this point of deal, a certain Nordine Achouri, whose extremely luxurious lifestyle – he owned a racehorse and spent most of his time in hotels in Monaco – contributed to his downfall.
>>> Find this report from Ligne Rouge in replay
Macron’s promises
In the field, many educators try to lead the dialogue. This is the case of Mohamed Benmeddour, who hopes with our camera that “over time, by bringing together young people and the police, there will be a dialogue and at the end the young people understand that the game is not worth it. the candle.”
But time is running out. Faced with the urgency of the Marseille situation, Emmanuel Macron, during a trip to the Marseille city at the beginning of last September, had promised 150 million euros and 200 additional agents by 2022. At the same time, he had also promised the renovation many schools in the northern districts as well as public transport serving them.
A short-term solution that does not seem to be entirely happy. “The phenomenon will not be solved only by the police and the justice system, the response must be much more global so that they have another social model, another future”, concludes the city prosecutor, Dominique Laurens, on our branch.
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