- Europe’s booming illicit drug market is worth at least €31 billion (£26 billion)
- Drug kingpins see desperate underage migrants as ideal targets for recruitment
Drug cartels are taking advantage of an ‘unlimited supply’ of vulnerable child migrants by using them as foot soldiers to shuttle cocaine across Europe – and dishing out heinous punishments to keep them in check.
Europe’s booming illicit drug market is worth at least €31 billion (£26 billion) according to the latest official report, of which cocaine accounts for some £10 billion as OECD figures suggested that the UK, Spain and Austria all rank in the top five countries worldwide where cocaine use is most prevalent.
Underage migrants, particularly those unaccompanied by older family members, are seen as ideal targets for recruitment through the ruthless eyes of the cocaine kingpins overseeing the flow of the illicit substance into and around the continent.
These children are typically in a precarious position – often with no means to support themselves and no legal status – and are therefore desperate for cash while their anonymity and perceived innocence make them less susceptible to detection by law enforcement.
The drug gangs use brutal methods to capture and control them, forcing them to perform sex acts in exchange for accommodation and threatening them with savage beatings and even gang rape to ensure compliance.
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European police data suggests that almost 16,000 unaccompanied child migrants entered the EU from Africa in 2022.
But thousands of these foreign minors have since gone missing and are unaccounted for – with EU law enforcement agencies suspecting hundreds were captured by brutal drugs gangs for their nefarious operations.
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North African children, particularly Moroccans and Algerians, are thought to be those most at risk, with a recent EU police force investigation cited by the Guardian declaring: ‘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.’
European police sources speaking to the Guardian said the use of child drug mules was being conducted ‘on an industrial scale’.
Reports also claimed that children are often found disfigured, either from beatings administered by their cartel handlers or as a result of knife attacks by minors of rival drugs gangs.
Meanwhile, a report on the phenomenon for Dutch justice officials seen by the Guardian claimed: ‘The [networks] force them to do things; many of the boys have been raped and filmed when being raped.’
The Netherlands and Belgium have long served as the primary entry points for drug traffickers shuttling cocaine into Europe, particularly via port cities like Rotterdam and Antwerp.
The latter this year topped the list of European cities where cocaine consumption is at its most voracious, with a March report by EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) and SCORE group – a Europe-wide sewage analysis network – finding that 1,721 milligrams of cocaine were detected per 1,000 people per day in the port city.
Although the likes of Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia are responsible for producing and exporting the drug, the South American cartels have built up a formidable network of contacts with criminal enterprises and crime families across Africa and Europe to ensure their product makes it to consumers in the UK and on the continent.
Some of the most notorious European groups involved in the trafficking include Italy’s ‘Ndragheta and Camorra crime families, Grupa Amerika and the Tito and Dino cartel in the Balkans, and the likes of the infamous Kinahan clan and ‘The Family‘ in Ireland.
But one gang in particular – the Mocro Maffia – is responsible for orchestrating much of the drug trafficking from North Africa into Europe via the Netherlands and Belgium.
The feared Dutch-Moroccan crime clan has for years been under the scrutiny of EU law enforcement teams, with the group’s undisputed leader, Ridouan Taghi, jailed for life in February of this year following an intense six-year trial.
Taghi and 16 other drug runners stood trial for six murders, four attempted murders, and countless other attacks planned between 2015 and 2017.
The kingpin went from something of a nobody to ‘Europe’s biggest drug lord’ in a matter of years, rising through the ranks as he smuggled record quantities of cocaine into the continent’s ports.
Taghi is said to have amassed a fortune of $1 billion (£789 million) and became one of the world’s most wanted men, guarded by his network of criminal cronies who lived and worked by the motto: ‘If you talk, you die’.
The gang was true to its word, with a slew of its associates found dead in a series of gruesome executions which earned it the reputation of a ‘well-oiled killing machine’.
The Mocro Maffia is also believed to have murdered several journalists and lawyers over the years, and has even issued threats to the prime minister and members of the Dutch royal family.
Investigators in 2020 discovered a soundproof torture room linked to the group, and in 2016 the criminal enterprise hit headlines when it left the severed head of a rival gang member on the streets of Amsterdam.
Despite many breathing a sigh of relief that Taghi and several of his accomplices are now behind bars for good, experts warned that jailing him will not be enough to quell his influence outside the prison walls – nor disrupt the flow of cocaine into Europe.
Dutch society has gained a reputation for its liberal stance on drugs, with cannabis attracting tourists and becoming a huge part of the country’s culture.
But there are fears that a crackdown is needed if there is hope of getting the situation under control.
Jan Struijs, the chairman of the Nederlandse PolitieBond police union, has described his country as a ‘narco-state 2.0’.