Search Intensifies for Missing 13-Year-Old in French Alps

This 13-year-old teenager, a resident of the Les Perce-Neige educational center in Gap, has not given any sign of life since March 23, the date on which he is said to have disappeared, according to the missing person alert issued by the police of the Hautes-Alpes. Since then, his family has been multiplying calls for help on social networks in an attempt to find him. According to the young man’s mother, the latter had expressed on several occasions his desire to get involved in the drug trafficking in Marseille. Amjad would have confided to her that he wanted to become a "chouf", a lookout in charge of monitoring the drug dealing points, in the La Castellane neighborhood.

The mother adds that her son threatened to go "make money" in Marseille and has been asking her for money for luxury clothes for months. Before this disappearance, the teenager had run away from his home several times, but was found each time. His educators at the home confirm the mother’s words, recalling that they had already reported the young man’s worrying associations. This information leads the investigators to explore the track of organized recruitment by drug trafficking networks, reports Au féminin.

His mother is worried and desperate. "He’s 13 years old, I’m dead worried. We’re from the Alps. Marseille is a jungle for a child," she writes on social media. Hospitalized since 2021, she no longer has the strength to take care of Amjad, which forced her to place him in a home. But the mother is not satisfied with the care and follow-up of her son. "We sent eight letters to the children’s judge, we alerted the ASE. We tried everything. I even asked for him to be sent to Morocco, but the children’s judge didn’t take me seriously. We tried everything before a tragedy happened," she lamented.

The teenager’s grandmother, for her part, denounces the lack of responsiveness of the authorities to find the adolescent: "We feel abandoned by everyone. The police know where he is, but they do nothing. We can warn the police where he is, they do nothing. No one calls me back, the home doesn’t even answer me anymore." A witness reportedly spotted the minor in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille, known for drug trafficking. Even if he is found, "they will replace him in a home, where he will run away again, until the day when we will not find him again," fears his mother.