Thousands of minor migrants forced into EU cocaine trade: The Guardian
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The Guardian exposes a trail linking hundreds of vulnerable African youngsters to brutal gangs.
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Belgian customs officers search for drugs in a container at Antwerp's port. (AFP)
Hundreds of lone migrant children in Europe are being coerced into working for drug gangs to supply the continent's growing cocaine demand, an exclusive investigation by The Guardian revealed.
EU police authorities have warned of industrial-scale abuse of African children by cocaine networks in Western Europe, particularly Paris and Brussels, as they aim to increase Europe's £10 billion cocaine market.
Child safety organizations have warned that cocaine gangs, who have an "unlimited" number of vulnerable African minors at their disposal, use cruel methods to keep them under control, including torture and rape if they do not sell enough narcotics.
Concerns about the degree of exploitation were so high that in March, Europol and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) conducted a press conference to provide their current overview of the European drug industry, estimated at around €30 billion ($32 billion) annually. Cocaine imports and ecstasy exports both set records in 2022. According to the authorities, cocaine and cannabis are the most common causes of violence.
European policymakers at the time warned that the unprecedented flow of illicit drugs in Europe has now created a drug market that drives gangs to engage in unparalleled violence against one another.
The EMCDDA's head, Alexis Goosdeel, claimed Europe is now seeing drug-related violence comparable to that of Central America, while Europol's Executive Director Catherine De Bolle revealed that "torture rooms" have been found in the EU.
EU police forces recently concluded in a separate assessment that "Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and France presented several concrete cases of the exploitation of hundreds of North African minors, recruited by drug trafficking networks to sell narcotics."
Other reports say the real total might be in the thousands, with the most recent police statistics indicating 15,928 unaccompanied minors arriving in Europe in 2022, many of whom have since gone missing.
According to a recent paper prepared by the Belgian federal police for Europol, "Thousands of unaccompanied foreign minors" cross into the EU yearly and disappear.
Many of them are "caught" by criminal circles and exploited, exacerbating their traumas.
According to Eric Garbar, chief of human trafficking and smuggling at the Belgian federal judicial police, "With African minors, essentially Moroccan and Algerian, the most important area is the exploitation by OCGs [organised crime groups] involved in criminal activities such as drug trafficking," adding that the EU has an "unstoppable low-cost human resource from Africa."
Police name the Moroccan “Mocro Maffia” as the main exploiter of the minors. The group contains many of Europe’s top cocaine trafficking cartels, who cooperate directly with South American manufacturers. The organization is said to be operating at the Belgium port of Antwerp, the key gateway for cocaine entering Europe.
They are famously vicious, delivering threatening Belgium’s justice minister and the Dutch crown princess. Numerous members in early 2024 engaged in a string of gangland killings were convicted for life.
