Marseille Drug Violence Escalates as Top Traffickers Operate from Abroad

"The real drug barons are a little smarter than those who are killing each other on the ground, since they are far away: Dubai, Algeria, Senegal or even Morocco. Formerly, these big crooks needed to be on the ground because otherwise they would not be obeyed. Today, the 20 biggest French drug traffickers no longer live in France. On the ground, we therefore have the teams that run the small SMEs of the drug distribution," said Frédéric Ploquin, a journalist specializing in organized crime, on franceinfo, after a new shooting that left three dead in Marseille. In total, 21 deaths in the context of settling scores mainly linked to drug trafficking in the city.

"From having rubbed shoulders with some of these traffickers and these new bosses, they feel they are in their right. When we talk to them, they consider it legitimate to go and settle their conflicts or to go and avenge so-and-so and have a practice of ultra-violence that has become completely trivialized, which they consider just and legitimate and of which they are moreover relatively proud. [...] They are capable of telling you that they are barbarians and that they assume it. It’s the one who will be the most barbaric," explains the specialist, noting that there is also the issue of social networks that spread and amplify, which makes a kind of publicity for this ultra-violence. There is a desire to show that one is the strongest.

Ploquin also said that the judicial police in Marseille is now overwhelmed by these murders. "Each time, a criminal investigation has to be opened which takes time and observations and meanwhile they are going much faster. They solve the criminal investigations at the very moment the crime is committed by eliminating the one that justice would have liked to see in the dock of the accused at the assizes for the previous crime, except that it’s too late, he’s already dead," he added.