A major anti-narcotics operation by Belgian police targeting a Marseilles-based crime syndicate resulted in the arrest of a dozen suspects on Tuesday, June 25th. This follows months of gruesome gang murders, kidnappings, and even gang-enforced blockades around working-class estates in western Brussels.
Machine guns, drugs, and large quantities of cash were recovered in the raids. The recently arrived gang operated out of migrant estates in the Anderlecht municipality of the city. Perhaps most worryingly for authorities, gang leaders previously arrested in February of this year were able to continue to run their drug empires from behind bars.
The arrival of the new Marseilles gang over the past year has resulted in multiple killings by established Moroccan gangs. A police spokesman described how the Marseilles organised crime group aspired “to take control of the drug market in the Belgian capital.”
According to police statements, up to ten houses were raided as part of the clampdown on the gang, which specialised in the supply of cocaine and marijuana. Some of those arrested were brought before a judge on Wednesday morning.
Algerian drug barons have been eyeing up control of the Belgian narco trade since late last year, when police apprehended Marseilles-based gangster Kamel Nabti, the leader of the notorious “La Maurelette” cartel, in an attempt to muscle in on the Brussels underworld.
Recent years have seen Brussels authorities grappling with escalating gang warfare caused by the flow of Latin American cocaine through the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. In February, municipal officials demanded the deployment of the Belgian army on the streets to deal with the growing malaise.
Narco crime in Brussels is traditionally dominated by Moroccan and Turkish gangs in the north and west of the city. According to press reports, the territorial war between rival crime groups there resulted in local dealers blocking off road access to certain estates—even conducting ID checks—while aiming various acts of intimidation at locals prior to Tuesday’s raids. Private security firm G4S was drafted in to provide protection for local businesses.
Additional arrests were made Tuesday in Marseilles, in cooperation with French police.
Responding to a bout of gangland violence last month, crime journalist Frédéric Ploquin outlined the threat posed to Brussels by the arrival of Marseilles syndicates and how they operate.
The real drug lords are a little smarter than those who kill each other on the ground because they are far away: Dubai, Algeria, Senegal, or Morocco. In the past, these big bandits 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 have the teams that run the small SMEs in the distribution of narcotics.
The growing phenomenon of narco-crime taking over swathes of Belgian society was a major feature in recent elections, as the country’s Justice Minister Paul Van Tigchelt warned of future clashes between Albanian, Moroccan, and newly arrived Algerian gangs in the city.
