A little girl was killed during a settlement of accounts between rival bands in the Belgian city which has become the main gateway to drugs in Europe.
by Jean -Pierre Stroobants (Brussels, correspondent)
We must send the army to monitor the port of Antwerp: Bart de Wever, the mayor of the city and president of the Nationalist Party Alliance Néoflamande (N-VA), called for great means, Tuesday, January 10, To combat cocaine trafficking in her city. His statements occurred after the death, the day before, of Firdaous E. B., 11, killed by a war shot which aimed at his family’s house in Merksem, a district in the east of the city.
The girl of Moroccan origin is the first victim of the fifty -type fire recorded since 2016 and attributed to the Mocro Maffia, Dutch organization of Moroccan origin, or to the other criminal groups which are fighting for control of the drug trafficking in the Flemish city. The girl’s uncle, Othman E. B., installed in Dubai for several years, has never been condemned, but the police investigation which, in 2021, made the hacking of the encrypted Sky ECC messaging network had revealed its probable involvement in the routing of cocaine in Europe. In 2016, Younes E. B., another uncle of Firdaous, had been removed and found in Paris after the likely payment of a ransom to his captors.
“I have begun for years to put an end to the action of these criminals before things get worse and it will have taken the death of a child for a reaction to finally arrive”, said Mr. de Wever. The mayor also pleads for a meeting of the National Security Council, which brings together the main ministers, the police, the intelligence services, the prosecutors.
“Other tragedies are to be feared”
Tuesday, the customs authorities revealed that 110 tonnes of cocaine had been seized in 2022 in the port of Antwerp. A record, with an increase of 23 % compared to the previous year, while in Rotterdam (Netherlands), the seizures (50 tonnes) fell by 29 %. This confirms that the Belgian city has become, by far, the main gateway to cocaine in Europe.
The quantities entered in Antwerp had a market value of some 5 billion euros but, according to a police source, they represent, at best, only 10 % of the total cargoes landed: 90 % of cocaine from, mainly , from Colombia, Panama and Ecuador therefore pass between the meshes of the net and feed the colossal loot of traffickers.
Faced with these, the authorities appear more and more deprived. “The fight against organized crime is the number one priority of our security strategy,” said Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo on Tuesday evening, while the Minister of Finance, Vincent Van Peteghem, announced an effort of 70 million ‘euros to equip the port of Antwerp with drones, mobile scanners and robots capable of spotting drugs in containers. The Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne – threatened with kidnapping by Dutch criminals in December 2022 -, said that it is the efforts of the police and the justice that explain the nervousness of the criminals. “Other tragedies are also to be feared,” he said Wednesday in the daily Het Laatste Nieuws.
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