Brother of French anti-drugs activist gunned down

A gunman on a motorbike has shot dead the 20-year-old brother of a prominent anti-drug activist in Marseille in a possible warning over his campaigning, a French prosecutor said Friday.

France’s second-largest city is struggling to battle drug crime, with more than a dozen people killed since the start of the year in turf wars and other disputes linked to cocaine and cannabis dealing.

Amine Kessaci, 22, became an activist and Green party member after losing an older brother to a drug-trafficking feud in 2020.

An unidentified gunman killed his youngest brother Mehdi, who wanted to become a police officer, on Thursday afternoon.

“A motorbike drew up beside the car of the victim, who had just parked. The backseat passenger on the motorbike shot the victim several times,” Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone said.

The young man had no criminal record, Bessone said.

The murder could have been a “warning” to Kessaci, he said, but added that the investigation was still in the early stages.

The activist had been under police protection, including after writing a book about victims of drug trafficking in Marseille, a source following the case told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.

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‘A rotten dream’

Kessaci last year told AFP that his older brother Brahim, whose burned body was discovered in a car in 2020, was the only one in a family of six siblings to have fallen into drug trafficking.

“You died because you believed in a rotten dream, sold piecemeal in stairwells. And if I’m speaking up today, it’s to put an end to that,” he wrote to his older brother in his book “Marseille, wipe your tears” published last month.

Those suspected of murdering Brahim are to go on trial in 2025.

Fourteen people have been killed in drug-related crimes since the start of the year in the Marseille region, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Kessaci, who grew up in what he describes as the city’s underserved northern neighbourhoods, in 2020 founded the NGO Conscience to help victims’ families.

The law student ran as a civil society member on the Greens list in the European elections and parliamentary elections last year, but was unsuccessful both times.

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‘Italian mafia tactics’

Lawyer Karima Meziene, who represents relatives of those killed in drug-related score settling, was alarmed at what she described as “Italian mafia tactics”.

“They’re targeting a family to silence someone. It’s going to scare a lot of people,” she said.

Marseille’s leftwing mayor Benoit Payan said that if the murder was “intended to discourage Amine from his activism against the drug trafficking that plagues our city, we would be facing an absolutely terrifying shift in gears”.

“We must view this evil as an octopus that must be attacked on all levels: we need additional police forces, magistrates, investigators,” he told AFP.

Kessaci told AFP last year that he believed that French authorities would have responded much sooner to drug crime in northern Marseille if it had been in “the beautiful Paris neighbourhoods” or the wealthier south of Marseille.

“Those who should be ashamed are the rich kids. They’re the ones consuming the drugs,” he added, saying they too had a little “blood on their hands”.

His younger brother Mehdi in July 2024 told AFP he was very proud to see his brother running for parliament.

“He’s always been a father figure to me,” he said.

“To see him on television, outside on posters, to see him get involved in politics in such a tough field — especially for a young guy like him — it makes me happy,” he said.

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