Since February 1, the Special Assize Court of the North has been trying six men accused of being involved in a cocaine traffic in the Port of Le Havre. A trial that puts the spotlight on the French port that is becoming one of the main gateways for drugs in Europe.
In the Neiges district, in Le Havre, the largest commercial port in France, a small house riddled with bullet holes. "I was awakened by what I thought were firecrackers. In fact it was a shooting," said a resident who did not want his name to appear in this article: "If you do, the next bullet will be for me."
In this neighborhood a few meters from the containers, where the law of silence reigns, we see the cranes loading and unloading the huge ships.
This week in Douai, the biggest drug trafficking trial that Le Havre has ever seen took place. Six defendants for whom the prosecution has requested 13 to 25 years of criminal imprisonment, all of whom lived or operated in Les Neiges. They are accused of having helped South American cartels to bring 1.3 tons of cocaine into Le Havre.
This is only the most recent case to fuel fears that the port of Le Havre is becoming a French version of the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam.
The number of containers unloaded at the port more than doubled between 2004 and last year, from 1.5 million to more than 3 million. The cargoes are diverse and varied, and may contain bananas or tins of foodstuffs, for example. But it is not only the number of containers that has increased, but also the hidden drugs: 10.5 tons were seized last year, three times more than in 2019.
According to Alain Lemaire, a customs employee and CGT union delegate, "We have neither the personnel nor the infrastructure to manage such traffic. Indeed, the number of surveillance agents has dropped from 180 in 2004 to 90 today.
"We check 1% of the containers that are unloaded in Le Havre and we can consider that we prevent a tenth of the cocaine from arriving. This trial is anecdotal and will not prevent the drugs from arriving en masse."
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Le Havre has now become the setting for scenes worthy of television series. Once a gang fled from the port with a truck full of cocaine under the fire of the police. Another time a criminal organization attacked a closely guarded depot to retrieve the drugs hidden in a shipment.
In addition, customs officers are regularly spied on with the help of drones that transmit live images of their seizures or individuals with binoculars posted on nearby rooftops.
According to Europol estimates, the European cocaine market is worth 10.5 billion euros at the cost of dockworkers who are under increasing pressure to work with the cartels. An embarrassing situation for Edouard Phillipe current mayor of Le Havre and former prime minister of Emmanuel Macron today considered his successor in the next presidential election.
Several dockworkers have already been convicted of working with cartels, some of them under duress, according to the police. In addition, since 2017 about 30 dockworkers have been kidnapped, some by drug traffickers, others by petty criminals who thought they had money on them from the traffic. Hardly any of them have pressed charges.
In 2020, the body of Allan Affagard, an influential dockworker in the CGT, was found beaten to death behind a school in the suburbs of Le Havre. Then aged 40, the father of a family had been suspected two years earlier of having brought a ton of cocaine out of the port, which he formally denied. In the weeks before his death, he had been bombarded with cryptic messages such as: "You owe us a favor. We know where you live".
According to Valerie Giard who represents a man facing life imprisonment at the Douai trial and who pleads guilty. Many dockers fall into the "trap", she says:
"Some are attracted by the lure of money, others start by refusing because they have pretty good salaries - in the 4,000 euros per month - but they receive threats, pictures of their wives and kids. The traffickers tell them it's not worth talking to their boss or the police because some of them are corrupt, so they feel trapped."
"Once you are caught in this spiral, it is very difficult to get out," said Bruno Dieudonné, the prosecutor in Le Havre.
According to an unofficial salary scale compiled by the public prosecutor's office, a truck driver is paid between 10,000 and 20,000 euros to take out the merchandise, a crane operator can expect 50,000 euros and a docker in charge of recruiting the workforce 150,000 to 200,000 euros.
Some dockers are paid to authorize the exit of containers or to move them out of sight and out of reach of surveillance cameras, others lend their badges to traffickers. This week, none of the defendants were dockworkers, they were tried separately in 2021. They are charged with importation and trafficking of narcotic substances in an organized gang. Three of the six defendants are in pre-trial detention; they are suspected of being the "principals" and of working for international organizations.
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Among them, we find Louis Bellahcene, 56 years old, alias Doudou. He officially lives on a pension of 977 euros per month. What according to the prosecution is not compatible with his taste put Louis Vuitton, his trips to Thailand and his cash deposits of several thousand euros. He may be accused of being a drug baron but he has competition, in 2017 he was kidnapped and had to pay a ransom of 600,000 euros. His partner would also have been kidnapped according to the prosecution and would have had to drop 2.5 million euros more.
This case is based mainly on wiretaps that allowed the seizure of 1.3 tons of cocaine from Brazil and the Dominican Republic and nearly 500Kg of cannabis resin to Martinique.
Le Havre may be in the sights of the cartels, but it has not yet reached the level of violence seen in the Netherlands and Belgium. Now the main gateway for drugs in Europe, the port of Antwerp has seen more than 200 violent drug-related incidents in the last five years. Shooting at a house in the Merksem district resulted in the death of an 11-year-old girl in January.
In September, Belgian police uncovered a plan to kidnap the Belgian Minister of Justice. Crown Princess Amalia of the Netherlands and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte were reportedly targeted last year. The country could quickly "be considered a narco-state," warns Johan Delmulle, the Brussels public prosecutor.
"We've gone to a completely different level of violence," laments Eric Snoeck, the director of the Belgian police. They don't hesitate to torture to get information or execute someone who hasn't fulfilled a contract... It's chilling."
However, "things could get worse here too," warns Bruno Dieudonné. We're not yet at the point of assault rifle attacks like in Antwerp, but we're not far from it."