A week ago, two hitmen on a motorcycle killed a twenty-year-old. His name was Mehdi Kessaci and he was the brother of a well-known anti-drug activist who had already been threatened and was being escorted. The murder, which represents a turning point in the threat posed by these organizations in France, has shaken the country and the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, has promised, as he has done several times in the past, to act. This Wednesday, in the Council of Ministers, the focus was on a less common part of the population: urban drug addicts. “Sometimes it is the bourgeoisie of urban centers that finance drug traffickers,” he said, as reported by government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon at the end of the meeting.
According to 2023 data from the French Observatory on Drugs and Addiction Trends (OFDT), drug trafficking employs 200,000 people in France, generates an estimated annual turnover of around €5.5 billion and supplies cocaine to 1.1 million users. For this reason, the head of state reiterated “the importance of a prevention and awareness policy”. “You can’t mourn the dead on the one hand and, on the other, continue to use at night when you return from work.”
It is the first time that the institutions hold responsible for the violence and, specifically, for the death of a certain urban middle class who habitually consume drugs. But the situation that arose last Thursday with the murder of Mehdi Kessaci is also new.
Thursday’s murder represents a further step forward in the threat posed by organized crime in Marseille. “This was not a classic showdown, but a crime of intimidation. And this is a clear turning point,” admitted Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. A thesis supported by the Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, who some time ago had warned against “Mexicanization” of the city due to the methods of extreme violence that the gangs began to use.
This Wednesday Amine Kessaci, brother of the murdered young man, had to attend the funeral wearing a bulletproof vest. Amine is a well-known figure in the fight against drug trafficking in the working-class neighborhoods of Marseille. Also an emerging voice in local politics (he is a candidate for deputy) and since last August he was escorted by the police. No one now doubts that his brother was an indirect victim of his work as an activist.
On a platform inside Le Mondethe activist published his vision of his brother’s murder. Unlike what many initially thought, he has no intention of giving up his fight. I will denounce and repeat that Mehdi died for nothing. I will denounce the violence of drug trafficking. His domain. I will denounce the cowardice of the intellectuals who committed the crimes. I will denounce the senseless drift of those who execute contracts, destroy lives and stain their souls forever. I will denounce to pierce the silence, as they pierce the bodies of our loved ones. I will denounce the shortcomings of the State, the failures of the Republic, the abandoned territories and the erased populations,” he wrote.
A large march has been called next Saturday in Marseille to denounce Mahdi’s crime and try to fight the idea silence that drug traffickers intend to impose. Amine, meanwhile, assures that he will not remain silent because his mother taught him “not to bow his head”. “I speak, from my pain, from the epicenter of my suffering, to ask for justice for mine, but also for all the other victims. I speak because I can only fight if I don’t want to die. I speak because I know that silence is the refuge of our enemies”.
