Violent Drug Gangs Bring Mayhem to Western Europe - WSJ

AMSTERDAM—Organized crime used to be considered a remote threat in much of Western Europe, but ruthless violence by criminal gangs is now rattling the peace in some of the world’s safest societies. Sweden now has Europe’s highest gun-homicide rate, and the military is helping police fight street gangs. In Denmark, residents of the commune Christiania shut their famed open-air cannabis market after violent gangs took over. In Belgium, armed security forces have started guarding customs trucks carrying seized cocaine to prevent criminals from stealing it back.

One of the most alarming exhibits of what the 21st-century drug trade has wrought upon long-peaceful European societies came earlier this year in the Netherlands, long known for its tolerant attitude toward recreational drugs. Dutch drug kingpin Ridouan Taghi was considered so dangerous that he was tried in a warehouse-turned-bunker in Amsterdam, guarded by hundreds of masked special forces and drones circling overhead to prevent a prison break. When the judges pronounced him guilty of involvement in five murders and two attempted killings, their faces were hidden and their names weren’t revealed.

During the six-year legal proceeding that led to Taghi’s conviction, three people linked to the state’s star witness were shot dead in the streets of Amsterdam: his brother, his lawyer and a well-known crime journalist who had joined the witness’s legal team. “We have seen murders before. What’s new about Taghi is that he also targets individuals who are not part of the criminal underworld: the brother of the star witness, a lawyer, a journalist,” said Robby Roks, associate professor of criminology at the Erasmus School of Law in Rotterdam. The case, he said, “raises all these questions about what these criminals with seemingly unlimited resources can do from prison.”

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A recent report by Europol, the law enforcement arm of the European Union, and EMCDDA, the EU’s drug agency, said several European countries are suffering “unprecedented levels of drug market-related violence, including killings, torture, kidnappings and intimidation.” The report identified 821 serious criminal networks active in the EU, with more than 25,000 members. The EU now considers organized crime a threat to European societies on par with terrorism.

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Europol attributes the violence to a globalization of the drug trade, a surge in coca cultivation in Colombia and a fragmentation of the supply chain. Gangs have established a firmer foothold in large European ports, including Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium. In 2019, cocaine seizures in Europe exceeded those in North America for the first time, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, EU authorities seized more than 300 tons of cocaine, a record.


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