Assassination of Mehdi, brother of anti-drug trafficking activist Amine Kessaci, shot dead Thursday, November 13 in Marseille, signed “organized crime methods”, according to the public prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone. Who adds that the warning murder hypothesis is not so “absolutely not excluded”, what will be done “take extra steps” in violence related to human trafficking. Observations shared by Clotilde Champeyrache, teacher-researcher at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts security defense center, author of a Mafia geopolitics (ed. Blue Rider).
Regarding the murder of Amine Kessaci’s brother, Marseille prosecutors did not rule out the hypothesis of an act of intimidation. Is that something new?
If true, then this is something new in France. Threats to loved ones do exist. Murder due to intimidation, and we have to remain careful at this stage, that would be another dimension. These are ways of doing things that reflect Latin America, Colombia’s narco ultra-violence.
What explains this apparent use of violence, which is a priori incompatible with human trafficking policy?
This is the result of a highly fragmented criminal world. Contrary to the image of an octopus that controls everything from A to Z, there are many criminal organizations that interact in the drug market. Small ones at the bottom of the scale, large ones, medium ones. The world is also dynamic, with organizations that aspire to be big, and become models that impose themselves. Nor should we ignore the overall picture of narcotics, which we find in the speeches of criminals who wrote their autobiographies, or those who chose to cooperate with the justice system. They take inspiration from others, trying to imitate methods.
These murders occurred while in Marseille, we can feel the slowdown after 49 murders related to human trafficking in 2023, 24 last year and 14 since the beginning of the year…
Visible violence, especially that which is not limited to problem solving where we say “they ended up killing each other, that was the lesser crime”, is not a good operation for a criminal organization. Once there is a shift in violence, especially in Marseille, and the public becomes angry, the State is obliged to react. This is bad for traffic.
Then why is there always death?
I returned to the question of the criminal image, with a form of super ego developing around the question of violence but without thinking about the consequences. Then, there is also the younger generation who are not members of criminal organizations, but are exploited and have problematic links to violence.
In Marseille, politicians have declared war on drug trafficking. Does it produce any effect?
In terms of actions disrupting supply, there is no effect. The goods, especially cocaine, are fully available, there have never been any disruptions in supply, in fact the price per gram is on a downward trend. As for confiscations which continue to increase, according to the service: that is not necessarily a good sign, it also means there is more in circulation.
How to win the war against drug trafficking?
In reality, we say we are waging a war on drug trafficking, but most of it is done at the consumer level. We do not stop containers at the port by conducting clean operations. The number of judicial police officers is insufficient. There weren’t even enough candidates for this competition. To confiscate criminal assets, it is necessary to carry out an investigation into the assets. It is long, complicated, and requires technical knowledge. And then, still no health response. We need to understand why we use so many drugs in France.
