Youth gangs of Marseille: blood, power and social networks international

On Wednesday, October 2, a 15-year-old boy came to the 3rd arrondissement of the Félix Payet neighborhood of the French city of Marseille to try to intimidate a group of blacks, a drug trafficking gang. They promised him 2,000 euros for shooting at the door of one of their houses, setting it on fire, and recording him in order to post it on social networks. He didn’t have time for anything. They stabbed him 50 times and then, while he was still alive, they burned him in a trash bin. Marseilles BarbecueThey call it. A few days later, a 14-year-old boy was ordered to kill one of the smugglers to avenge his death. When he reached the specific point, he asked the Bolt driver (a VTC service) to wait for him. Upon hearing his refusal, he shot a resident of one of the northern neighborhoods, a football player, in the back of the head with a 357 Magnum. amateur The 36-year-old man, who drove that taxi to support his family, died instantly.

Both crimes were arranged by the same person from jail Of Luynes, near Aix-en-Provence. All they had to do was announce it through a social network and promise a sum of money that was never going to be collected. The bidder, 23 years old and convicted of murder, assured police that he was a member of the DZ Mafia, one of two criminal groups that currently share control over Marseille. A statement that caused an unprecedented event in the history of Marseille crime. A day later, a recorded video was published on the Internet in which a dozen members of said organization denied their connection with the crime and denied it to the press and the prosecutor. As if they were a terrorist group. Young people appeared behind the table with their faces covered with a sheet with DZ Mafia written on it. “The murder of the 14-year-old boy, as well as the use of a taxi to commit the crime, have nothing to do with our methods. We have sufficient men, vehicles and means to take action if we are forced to. We hope the truth will be restored,” a man explained in a sly voice. A way to clean up your brand. Also to show your strength.

Marseille is going through another serious criminal crisis. After 49 deaths from firearms in 2023, a record number, there have been 19 deaths so far this year. According to his spokesman, political officials celebrate the decline, although the city’s mayor, socialist Benoit Payan, preferred not to respond to this newspaper “if the focus was to talk about crime”. But the analysis is more complex. Especially when it comes from people who know the area, like police officer and National Alliance union leader Rudy Manna. “We are in the process of Mexicanization of life in Marseille. The hitman guy the other day was the first to react to the contract made through the social network. We see the horrors of extreme violence live. These youth are helpless, many are unaccompanied minors, who become fodder for mafias in this type of work. I’ve been working in Marseille for 25 years and I’ve never seen this,” he says, crying bodice Next to the old port. “Life for a 14-year-old child, whose parents are in jail (this was the case of the 14-year-old hitman) and whose life experience is video games and social networks, has no value,” he insists.

The city’s Attorney General, Nicolas Besson, intervened this week, calling the latest crimes “unprecedented barbarity.” Magistrate, author of the word “anti-narcoticTo talk about the murders in Marseille, he put the number of drug points in the city at 128 and spoke of a “total loss of references”. Last Wednesday, a police station in Cavaillon, 60 kilometers from Marseille, was set on fire by a group of traffickers who had faced police raids on their drug sales locations a few days earlier. At midnight, they set fire to three vehicles, which burnt down and the fire spread inside the police station, which had to be evacuated through the back door. “It also happened in Marseille in the Félix Payet neighborhood three months ago. “This is revenge for doing one’s job well,” explains a police officer who requested anonymity and who serves in BAC Nord, the intervention brigade in the northern areas.

two marseilles

Marseille is a city divided in half: a poor north, the so-called quarter north, and the South, relatively prosperous. Two worlds that barely meet in some places that function as social free zones, such as the velodrome, the Olympique de Marseille stadium, the unofficial patron saint of the city. La Castellane (the neighborhood where Zinedine Zidane was born), La Paternel, Les Rosiers, La Bricarde… For years they have been impenetrable areas for the police or anyone who was not going to buy drugs. But in recent years, two rival gangs waged a bloody war that left nearly a hundred people dead: the DZ Mafia and the Yoda. The result was the disappearance of the seconds and a certain stillness of their old headquarters. “Today, part of that violence and drug trafficking has moved into the Félix Payet area,” explains Manna.

Marseille, France’s second most populous city with 850,000 inhabitants, has 41 neighborhoods in which half of its population can be considered poor. France sets the poverty threshold at a monthly income of less than 1,216 euros for those living alone and 2,554 euros for family units. In the neighborhoods called QPVs, the French acronym for City Priority Neighbourhoods, the average income does not reach 1,000 euros. Half of that population does not have any diploma or higher education. In early September 2021, after another wave of killings, French President Emmanuel Macron spent three days in the city. He then presented a 1.5 billion euro plan to dig the city out of the hole. The impacts are still difficult to understand in some neighborhoods. “It is becoming increasingly difficult and dangerous for us. They have weapons of war and hand grenades, and we have small guns. For higher margins we will need more power. To open the doors of the house more easily. If we had better weapons we would have performed better. And may justice support us in our work. Otherwise, it is completely impossible to confront them,” this police officer insists over the phone.

Félix Payet, next to Marseille train station, is today one of the most depressed neighborhoods in Europe. It was built between 1958 and 1961 to house residents in co-ownership. Pieds-Noirs (Blackfeet) returning from Algeria. During the next decade, a second wave of immigrants arrived, primarily from North Africa, and many of the old owners stopped paying for services, resulting in the neighborhood’s decline. Most residents – today many of them from Comoros – are fed up with the situation. But they can’t do anything. Sebastian Hebray, 39, lives Repent Loubon, the street that separates the little hill where black people sell cocaine and the Moulin de Mai, the abandoned factory where two people were recently murdered and the DZ mafia sells heroin. “Yeah, my house is like Fort Apache. The next day they tried to enter when my son was sleeping,” says Municipal Corporation gardener Hebray, who is on leave after the incident.

without fear of murder

At least three drug sales centers are actively functioning at 11 am on Friday. Two teenagers in black balaclavas, hats and glasses Motocross They control the entrance to one of the places where drugs are distributed. One of them shouts at the curious reporters. “What do you want? Get out of here. Moving on…”, he shouts with admirable strength of conviction despite his young age. After the latest murders no one wants to trouble him anymore. In the Northern Areas Social teacher and respected mediator Momo Benmedour knows them well. “The current problem is that of teenagers who do not reflect and are easy to manipulate, there were limits and murder. Surpassing them all. But these people are not afraid to kill. Above all, there is a change in crime due to the influence of social networks.

Most of these minors come from single-parent families. But all the experts say that the best news is the impact of social networks on this awareness of evil. “They use them to commit their crimes, but also to communicate and boast. He loves Mexican cartel videos. And they are already committed to the boats that bring the substance from Spain. They have access to a world that wasn’t real here, but they turn into the real one. Videos of beheadings, accounts, murders… and they can communicate with whoever they want. “It’s very dangerous,” says Benmedor.

The video published this week by DZ Mafia – which surfaced in Patternal in 2010 – is an example of this. But also the ages of the killers and the victims, who are sometimes part of the same mix without any break in continuity, as Karima Mezien, spokesperson and lawyer for the group of those killed in Marseille, pointed out while sitting in front. The Palace of Justice, where he has spent half his life since his brother’s murder in 2016. “We don’t use words like ‘innocent victims’ or ‘count’, because that would imply that it’s his problem that doesn’t affect us. This way it doesn’t take shortcuts or make sense. The first thing to review the terminology is to understand that many of these children are taken from their parents. And when the parents tried to do something, the clan came, put a gun in their mouths and told them: ‘Your son is ours.’ They are children who have been forced into trafficking, and sometimes they want to return home but cannot. Look, not everything is black or white. It’s a complex situation and we try to provide reality,” he explains.

Karima broke her face in the court pleading for justice. But he believes France must adapt its legal arsenal to current times. “Everything happens on social networks like Telegram, where police and judges have great difficulty in intervening. There is also a shortage of resources for the police and judges. There is a great feeling of impunity. Remember what happened to that fugitive…” This refers to a native of Marseille named Mohammed Amra FlyWho was being taken in a jail van on May 14 and the vehicle was at the toll, when his gang freed him. The criminals, armed with assault rifles, stopped the van and killed two prison officers. Then they disappeared without any trace. Today, La Mosca is missing. And also the murderers of the 15-year-old boy who was burnt alive.