Foreign Correspondent: Sept 22

This week’s episode of Foreign Correspondent is a report from French broadcaster M6, which gains inside access to a police’s elite drug squad as it tries to bust open the drug trade.

The French port city of Marseille is caught up in a drugs war.

Fuelled by big profits, rival gangs have gone to war with each other and with police.

The gangs have access to powerful weapons, and that means people are dying.

The dealers operate out of the housing estates on the city’s outskirts, where they’ve set up sophisticated and lucrative networks, selling cocaine, cannabis and MDMA.

“We’re just traders,” says one gang boss. “Our mothers…they can’t even pay the rent so they can’t even support us. We have to do all this alone.”

In this dramatic documentary, French broadcaster M6 gains rare, inside access to the police’s elite drug squad as it tries to bust open the drug trade.

The cameras capture the high-risk operations as heavily armed police units raid the estates, arrest the dealers and confiscate their stash.

The French filmmakers also gain access to the drug gangs who explain their hierarchical structure, from the teenagers who act as lookouts at the estates’ entrances to the managers who oversee the street dealers.

“It’s a business, everyone has a role to play,” says one organiser.

The gang members also reveal that the threats from rivals means they need to be armed.

“Always keep something aside, in case they want to attack,” says one organiser.

“Between Marseille and the Kalashnikov, it’s always been a love story. Every problem has a solution. And with a Kalashnikov, the solution is quick.”

8pm Thursday on ABC.