2023-12-22 06:00:21
Point of deal in the Maison-Blanche city, in the northern districts of Marseille, in the south of France, December 1, 2023. NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
With 47 deaths and 118 injured so far, drug banditry is making 2023 a dark year in Marseille where blood has never flowed so much at the city’s hundred or so drug sales outlets. A “historically never reached level”according to the public prosecutor Nicolas Bessone who, Thursday, December 21, carried out an analysis of “this very sharp increase in narco-homicides », these murders linked to drug trafficking. Their number has more than doubled in three years; in 2020, assault rifles in the hands of criminal gangs caused twenty deaths.
Already observed for several years, “a very strong rejuvenation” of the victims and perpetrators of these assassinations is anchored in this phenomenon. Seven miners were killed, eighteen others injured. As for the perpetrators, of the 56 people indicted for assassination by an organized gang or attempt, six are minors and 51% are between 18 and 21 years old. Like two young men, one aged 18, the other aged 19, hitmen arrested at the start of the year, in flagrante delicto, “without prior history in relation to the seriousness of the facts”lamented Mr. Bessone.
Drawing on a typology of victims, the prosecutor identifies four categories: drug traffickers affiliated with a criminal group, young lookouts and sellers machine-gunned on the point of a deal, directly targeted residents of cities where, in a logic of «narcoterrorism»we seek to appropriate the network in place and, finally, so-called collateral victims, which explains why three women will be among the deaths in 2023.
Read the investigation: Article reserved for our subscribers In Marseille, drug banditry, its shootings which have become commonplace and its victims, direct or “collateral”
Young people pay a heavy price
The category of jobbers, these little hands recruited on social networks by Marseille traffickers, is increasing sharply. These young people who give in to the mirage of easy money pay a heavy price, like this 16-year-old Savoyard teenager, killed on November 13, on the so-called “Drive de La Bricarde” drug plan. He died just four hours after his arrival in Marseille and his recovery at Saint-Charles station by a « taxi » of the network. When leaving his mother in the morning, the young man said to her: ” See you tonight ! » The Marseille prosecutor’s office is considering impactful messages on social networks to dissuade would-be drug dealers from coming to Marseille by making them aware of the risks they run.
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The share of women, and this is new, is also growing within Marseille drug banditry since four have been indicted for criminal association with a view to committing crimes. “Previously, women acted as nannies of money, drugs, weapons, today, we see that they seem to take a more active role in the management of deal points and in the organization, sponsorship of assassinations. » According to the prosecutor, women, now operational, can replace a companion on the run or in prison.
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