Belgium fears becoming a “narco-state”
In Brussels, the prime minister, three federal ministers (of the interior, justice, and health), the federal prosecutor and fourteen burgomasters (mayors) are meeting to discuss a long-neglected subject: drug trafficking which, during the summer, gave rise to an unprecedented outburst of violence in the country. It was September 15. ” Finally “sighs a magistrate, who has been deploring the slowness of the response for years when, he assures us, it is now a question of preventing the kingdom from becoming a “narco-state”.
It all started in 2012, when Dutch traffickers kidnapped one of the members of a gang who had tried to steal a batch of cocaine from a container in the port of Antwerp. The family changed their minds when they received a photo of the meat grinder the kidnapped young man was threatened to walk through. Since then, the violence has not ceased and this summer there have been shootings, arson attempts, stabbings (with one death) and grenade attacks on homes and businesses. successful. In the Belgian capital, first of all, where a battle for territory is taking place, but also and above all in Antwerp, whose port has been, for years, the epicenter of cocaine trafficking in Europe. Nearly 90 tons were seized there in 2021, 38 tons during the first six months of the year, while 28 others bound for Belgium were confiscated in South America.
An estimate has become recurrent: for every ton seized, nine escape customs officers in Antwerp. The total amount of cargo landed in the Flemish city before flooding Europe, via the Netherlands, would therefore fluctuate between 50 and 60 billion euros per year, or the equivalent of the annual pension budget in Belgium. Enough to attract the greed of mafias of all nationalities, who are trying to get their hands on this market.
Bart De Wever, mayor of Antwerp and president of the first opposition party, the neo-Flemish Alliance (N-VA, nationalist and conservative) demanded an emergency meeting of a national security council to counter a phenomenon in constant expansion and an unprecedented wave of violence. The government probably considered the symbol a little too strong, and it only promised a new plan – said “XXL” : 300 million for the recruitment of police officers, the control (eventually) of 100% of cargoes arriving in Antwerp, a revision of a law on drugs that is more than 100 years old, or even the appointment, at the port, of a special prosecutor in charge of the coordination of repressive actions.
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