Underage Moroccan Migrants Exploited in Brussels Drug Trade

According to Europol, these "small hands" of drug trafficking work for 70% of criminal organizations in Europe. Who are these minors and how do they join these networks? Undocumented for the most part, they are from Morocco or Algeria. "I arrived in Belgium two months ago, we are all lost here, no one is happy to do this. But it’s easy, my friend over there for example, everyone knows him, he waits on the street and people come to him," confides a major dealer to RTL.

Police arrest minor dealers every day, but they are immediately released. They are "either undocumented people or people who don’t have much on them because they are well organized. Dealers who are used as cannon fodder by the networks. So they are really interchangeable. When we arrest one, he is replaced in a quarter of an hour by someone else," explains Fabrice Cumps, mayor of Anderlecht.

The criminal networks recruit these minors through social networks, promising them astronomical sums, ranging from 100 euros per day to monitor and alert the police, 180 euros to sell cannabis, 200 euros to sell hard drugs, up to 1,000 euros to shoot at a facade or a person. Once recruited, "they are housed in squats. They are mistreated. There is a lot of aggression, violence. They are drugged..." details An Berger, spokesperson for the federal police.

François Bertrand, an activist, says that minors "are completely instrumentalized by networks that have to sell larger quantities of drugs at all costs, especially here since the post-Covid years." The phenomenon is spreading in Europe. In Marseille, "the minors active in drug trafficking are getting younger and younger. 15 years ago, this type of profile, they were 16, 17, 18 years old. In serious delinquency, whether it’s hold-ups, attempted murder, contracts, now they are 14, 15, 16 years old," notes a specialized educator.

To get these minors out of delinquency, appropriate supervision is necessary, notes an educator. "They are big kids who have never played board games. They are kids who don’t know how to swim. They are kids who need to be taught to be a child before becoming an adult." In addition to support, these young people must also face the rigor of the law, believes a Brussels judge: "Today, we know that there are places in IPPJ (closed educational institutions) that are not available. We have a waiting list of 100 young people. So you can imagine that there is a very strong sense of impunity at this level."