Inside Marseille's drug gangs, where children are recruited to kidnap, torture and kill

In 2022, a woman bought hashish from a young seller on a housing estate in Marseille. Along with the drugs, he pressed a note into her hand. It read that the two of them were being held captive, that they needed help, and that they were 15 years old. She called the police.

A French court heard earlier this year what lay behind the note. The two boys had approached a gang around the Frais-Vallon estate looking for paid work, illegal though it was. One handled money, the other worked the streets. Before long their bosses accused them of causing shortfalls in takings. Regular beatings followed, the court was told, along with being forced to dance naked in front of a camera, a form of blackmail. One of the boys was raped. Hours after the note was handed over, they tried to escape through a second-storey window and injured themselves. One got away. The other was caught, beaten and stabbed, but survived. Photos on the phone of one alleged torturer showed several other young men in similar distress. Six men have since received heavy sentences.

The case shows the hold drug gangs have over parts of France's second city. Beyond the tourist centre, with its street art and hip-hop scene, lie deprived streets and high-rise estates that police do not enter lightly. A BBC team spent months trying to gain access. It found gangs luring vulnerable young people with promises of easy money and then trapping them in dealing, violence and exploitation.

The dominant group is DZ Mafia, which emerged victorious from a bloody turf war. DZ is the internet country code for Algeria, where one of its founders, the French-Algerian Mehdi Laribi, was detained earlier this year under a French arrest warrant. Dimitri Zoulas, head of France's anti-drug trafficking unit, says the gang rose to prominence in 2023 as the first in France to market itself as a brand through video statements on social media. Its latest came in July, after intelligence suggested the mayor of a nearby town might be targeted and he was placed under police protection. In the video, six masked men in black stood behind a table while one read out a denial of the gang's involvement.

The market feeds it. Zoulas says cocaine users in France are expected soon to reach two million, up from 600,000 in 2017, and that drug smuggling generates €7bn a year and involves 200,000 people. Authorities say more minors are being drawn in; during 2025, more than 10,000 children were involved in some way. DZ Mafia now recruits across France, not only to sell drugs but to kidnap, torture and kill, and the kingpins directing them often do so from prison or overseas.

Karine Brouillard knows the cost. Her son Hugo first ran away at 15 from their village in the Nord department and was picked up by police three days later in Marseille, nearly 1,000km away, carrying money and cannabis. In 2023 he said he had a holiday job at a restaurant near Marseille and kept in touch. Three weeks later a doctor phoned her: her son had arrived the night before with a bullet to the head. Police believe he was brought for treatment from a gang-controlled area and suspect he was involved with a gang. The area was Quartier Nord. The restaurant existed, but staff said they had never taken on anyone called Hugo. Karine still does not know why he was shot.

Quartier Nord is where DZ Mafia holds sway. Fadella Ouidef, a 41-year-old mother of four who lives there, drove the BBC team through. Thirty-seven seconds after entering one estate, they were cornered: horns sounded as the car passed a gang checkpoint staffed by teenagers, and a grey 4x4 forced them to the roadside. Fadella said she was preparing a report for her housing association, and the driver let them leave on condition they stop filming. She says the gangs have grown very aggressive lately.

Those inside describe the pull. Camil, now 20 and claiming to have left, rose to running security in one area. He says recruiters give you whatever you want, from cars and apartments to drugs and prostitutes, and loyalty lasts until death or prison; any weakness is exploited. Adam, jailed awaiting trial over several murders, spoke by Snapchat video call. He says his cold-bloodedness took him up the ranks, feels partly guilty but has no regrets, and calls himself one more brick in the wall. Joe, 23, manages a deal point for a rival gang and says he earned €3,000 a month at 13 and now earns €5,000 to €10,000. "It destroys people, but we all make our own choices," he shrugs. (Names are pseudonyms; identities were protected for safety.)

Zoulas calls this a national security threat, citing road accidents, family violence, suicides and more than 700 overdoses a year, and warns of a potential systemic breakdown of the criminal justice system. Since 2024 police say about 1,000 DZ Mafia associates have been arrested and 600 jailed, yet the fight is getting harder. Gangs replace losses through social media, with ads for drivers, couriers and hitmen reaching teenagers in Paris, Nantes and Lille. Thibaut Fontaine, head of France's anti-organised-crime unit, says recruits are now often people with no criminal past but exploitable vulnerabilities, sent into the lion's den, and easier to arrest quickly for it.