His childhood dream dented by life was big cars surrounded by girls in bikinis. To access this mirage, on August 9, 2019, Mathieu – the first name has been changed –, 16 years old, escaped from the social assistance for children home in Eure-et-Loir where he was staying after several failures foster family placements. Direction Marseille where, upon reading tempting advertisements published on the social networks Snapchat and TikTok by drug sales networks looking for labor, the teenager thinks that he will earn 500 euros daily by selling drugs. Drugs.
Three days after disembarking at Saint-Charles station, on August 13, a car dropped him off between life and death in front of a hospital before leaving with screeching tires. His body is tortured, bears the marks of around forty cigarette burns and Mathieu was burned with a blowtorch on his penis and thighs.
Four defendants aged 22 to 30 are on trial from Friday September 8 before the Bouches-du-Rhône Assize Court for this ordeal which the judges described as “kidnapping and sequestration accompanied by acts of torture and of barbarism.”
Like all the young wanderers who come to Marseille to offer their arms to drug traffickers – they have been called “jobbers” – Mathieu finds, upon his arrival, a “job” in Micocouliers, a housing estate in the northern districts of the city. , a mecca for the sale of narcotics. He was arrested when he had just taken up his post but, unbeknownst to the police, he hid the cocaine and cannabis contained in his “coal dealer” bag under a tree.
“Worse than an animal”
Police custody, children’s judge and placement in a home while he finds an educator who will accompany him to Chartres… But Mathieu immediately runs away, runs to Micocouliers to collect the drugs and runs in front of building A6 in the Félix-Pyat city to sell his a few grams. This sale in “freelance”, without the authorization of the managers of Félix-Pyat, immediately leads to a shower of punches and iron bars by the actors of the network. They want to know who he works for. Taken to an abandoned association premises, he is tied to a chair with electric cable, stripped completely naked using scissors, burned and beaten. A boy then aged 17 – sentenced to ten years in prison in November 2022 by the juvenile court – forced him to snort cocaine. Was he also made to swallow stain remover for the laundry, of which the investigators found traces on the spot? “They treated me worse than an animal”Mathieu will say to the investigating judge.
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