He might have been any other excited teenager going on his first holiday to Spain, filled with thoughts of hitting the beaches and clubs and nursing hangovers later. However, when this 17-year-old got on a plane from Brussels to Malaga, he was on a very different mission. He was a teenage assassin, recruited by a crime gang to kill a rival.
Other children before him had tried to gun down their own targets in a turf war that is haunting the Costa del Sol, but had been thwarted by Spanish police. So it was that last December, the Belgian boy became the first minor to kill his target in cold blood.
Police say the teenager was picked up at the airport by men he had never met before. They took him to a hotel, where he was presented with a brand-new American made sub-machine gun.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had never touched a gun before. But he was given a quick lesson in how to pull the trigger.
Later, he was taken to nearby Fuengirola, a popular holiday town. There, the gang handlers showed him a cannabis club where a Dutch drug dealer was believed to be relaxing.
Wearing a hood and dark clothes, he waited in the shadows. Two hours after touching down in Spain, the boy opened fire, shooting the man 19 times. Once certain the “target” was dead, he escaped on a bicycle.
He dumped the bike and took a taxi to the hotel where he was staying. There his handlers, members of the notorious Mocro Maffia, had whisky ready to toast a “successful” night.
“It’s horrific. This was the first successful gangland killing using adolescents, but there have been at least two other attempts when we have been able to stop them,” said a senior Spanish police officer whose unit is tasked with preventing organised crime gang murders on the Costa del Sol. “They are increasingly popular, primarily because they are cheaper than hiring a professional hitman.
“Teenagers will be offered about €20,000 whereas a professional can expect to be paid about €60,000 or more. Also, they normally have no criminal records, so if they are caught then they can expect lower sentences than adults who are convicted of murder.”
The young Belgian assassin was arrested. He is now awaiting trial for murder. Police also arrested two men who arranged the flights, bought the bicycle and whisky and sent the machine gun from Paris to Malaga.
Two other child would-be assassins were recruited by crime gangs and paid handsomely to kill rivals. Both attempted murders were prevented after extensive intelligence operations between Spanish and other northern European police forces.
In one case, a 17-year-old Swedish boy arrived on the Costa del Sol last year. He spent weeks in different hotels until gangsters found him a scooter. He used it to watch a housing estate in Benalmadena, a resort popular with British tourists and expatriates, where his target was believed to be living. A member of a biker gang, he was to be shot with an assault rifle.
“In his hotel, he had tape, gloves, clothing, everything meticulously prepared for the crime. But we caught him before then,” said a police officer involved in the operation.
In northern Europe, children as young as 13 have been used as hitmen by gangs to settle disputes between drug dealers. Child killers are attractive to organised criminals, who have no compunction about exploiting these often-vulnerable youths. In the case of the Belgian teenager, he had escaped from a children’s home shortly before he was recruited.
“The gangs target these vulnerable youths who do not have any money. To them, a payday of €20,000 seems like a fortune, a dream come true,” said the Spanish officer.
Graham Keeley is a freelance journalist covering Spain and Portugal