#Marseille

Drug gangs in Marseille are pulling children from across France into dealing, kidnapping, torture and murder, a BBC investigation has found. The gangs lure vulnerable young people with promises of easy money. Then they trap them in a world of violence and exploitation. According to the BBC, the bosses often control them from prison or from abroad. They see the young recruits as easy to corrupt and expendable. One case shows how brutal it gets. In 2022, a woman buying hashish on a Marseille housing estate was handed a note by the young seller. It read: "We're being held captive and need help. We are 15-years-old." A French court heard this year that two boys had approached a gang looking for work. The bosses later accused them of "shortfalls" in the takings. The court heard the boys were regularly beaten and forced to dance naked on camera as blackmail. One of them was raped. The boys tried to escape through a second-storey window. One got away. The other was caught, beaten and stabbed, but survived. Six men have since received heavy sentences. The city's most powerful gang is DZ Mafia. It won a bloody turf war and is now one of the most feared criminal groups in France. DZ is the internet country code for Algeria. According to the BBC, one of the gang's founders, French-Algerian Mehdi Laribi, was detained there earlier this year under a French arrest warrant.…