Marseille's DZ Mafia recruits children to kidnap and kill, BBC investigation finds

Drug gangs in Marseille are recruiting children and teenagers, including from outside the city, to work in drug-dealing zones and to carry out kidnappings and killings, a BBC News investigation has found.

The dominant gang, DZ Mafia, controls the Quartiers Nord area of Marseille. The city has 90 drug-dealing zones, housing estates sealed off and controlled by the gangs. In its later bulletin, BBC News reported that DZ Mafia is one of Europe's most powerful drug gangs. It won a violent turf war against a rival three years ago and now wields power in the city.

Children are lured with cash on the streets and online. Social media has become the gang's most potent recruitment tool, with job adverts attracting mostly teenage minors from across France, the investigation found. One teenager said he was paid 60 euros a day. A dealer said that when he was 13 he made about 3,000 euros a month, and that his earnings had since risen to between 5,000 and 10,000 euros a month. 'Once you are in the business and you see the money coming in, you don't want to stop,' he said. Asked about people dying from gang violence, he said: 'It destroys people, but they make their own choices.'

During a visit to a neighbourhood, the BBC team encountered gang checkpoints close to a school and was stopped by a grey 4x4. A local woman convinced the driver to let them leave. The team said it took months to access a deal point.

A member of a hit squad, speaking from a prison cell while awaiting trial for several murders, described the violence. 'The assassinations that I'm charged with being involved in were quite shocking. Attempts in broad daylight, in traffic jams,' he said. He said it could range from slapping a man to 'taking him in front of his mother and burning him up in the car.'

In its later bulletin, BBC News reported that Thibaut Fontaine, who runs the National Police's anti-organised crime unit, said the adverts were contracts for assassination. He said social media had broken geographical boundaries and become a meeting point for criminal supply and demand. Young people sent by their bosses are considered expendable and usually lack the experience to evade police, so they are identified and arrested quickly, he said.

Drug trafficking in France generates 7 billion euros a year, and that figure is rising, the investigation reported, as cocaine floods into cities such as Marseille.

The impact reaches beyond Marseille. In a village near the Belgian border, Karen told BBC News about her son Hugo. He went to Marseille saying he had a job as a waiter, and his father bought him black trousers and shoes. Three weeks later a doctor called to say Hugo had arrived at hospital with a bullet to the head. He later died. It is thought he was brought to hospital from an area controlled by drug gangs, and Karen suspects he responded to one of their adverts.

Those in power say tackling drug trafficking is a priority. The BBC News investigation concluded that the criminal network is widening, with children in the middle paying the price.