mStruggling means always exposing yourself to risk. In the case of drug trafficking, the figure is high. And for the Kessaci family, the loss is enormous. This Thursday, November 13, Mohamed Kessaci, 20 years old, was shot dead on the 4the Marseille district, a stone’s throw from the city’s largest concert hall, the Dôme, at around 2:30 p.m.
“A motorbike approached the victim’s vehicle which had just parked. The rear passenger of the motorbike fired several shots at the victim who was still in his vehicle,” said the Marseille Prosecutor’s Office in a press release, announcing the opening of an investigation into allegations of murder committed by an organized gang and criminal association with the intent to commit a crime.
READ ALSO Johanna Rolland: “Nantes has never invested so much in security” The person killed was unknown to the police and justice services and had a clean criminal record. He takes an exam to become a peacekeeper. According to the first element of the investigation, he “was outside everything that disturbed Marseille, drug trafficking and organized crime”, the judge told France Info, for which the hypothesis of a warning murder “at this stage is by no means excluded”.
“Young people from northern neighborhoods are not all thugs”
And for good reason: Kessaci’s name resonates in the city of Marseille as one of the voices in the local fight against drug trafficking. Born on the 13the Marseille district, Amine Kessaci is only 22 years old. However, his awareness of the drug problem is already significant. Frais Vallon was the neighborhood where he grew up, but also the neighborhood he saw “drowning in this drug trade,” he explained in 2021 to France Info.
In June 2020, at the age of 17, he founded the Conscience association. He organized food distributions, clean-up operations, white marches. This helps the family, legally and psychologically, in dealing with this tragedy. The aim was to “raise awareness that young people in the north are not all thugs and that young people can start projects”, while carrying out ecological awareness-raising operations, he later explained.
READ ALSO Finances, security, housing… in Marseille, it’s decision time for Benoît Payan “We are tired of seeing politicians we don’t know, people who have never come to our neighborhood, who have never seen cockroaches on the walls, who have never seen doors not closed, who have never seen scooters on fire every night. » These words are not in vain: they were spoken by a young man whose family was affected by the tragedy.
“You have to make this plan with us”
In December 2020, his older brother, Brahim Kessaci, was killed in a triple murder. He had been the victim of a gunshot, and his body was found charred in a vehicle near Marseille. Brahim was the only one who fell into drugs among the family of six, according to Amine. “When we talk about solving problems, we forget that the dead are people, often young people, and not just savages killing each other,” he later warned. World.
When Emmanuel Macron came to Marseille in September 2021, he challenged it: “There is no point in coming with plans made in Paris. You have to draw up these plans with us, local elected officials, associations, families of the victims. » His associations have spread to several cities in France, especially Cavaillon, Ajaccio, Marignane, Tours, Mulhouse, Nîmes, Lyon… to the Antilles and Paris.
READ ALSO Police: “We searched between 300 and 500 files each, some of which date back to 2017” “We want to show that young people from immigrant backgrounds, young people from northern neighborhoods… they can leave their cities,” he explained. “It is not because we are in a northern environment and have seen guns and drugs in our cities that we are not interested in various topics.» His commitment is high: in 2024, for the first time he presented himself as a candidate at the European elections, in tenth place on the list of the Ecologists party, led by Marie Toussaint.
“Extra step”?
If not elected, he would then narrowly lose in the 2024 legislative elections, where he would run under the banner of the New Popular Front. His struggle also moved to bookstores: in October 2025, he published Marseille, wipe your tears. Life and death in the land of drug traffickingwhich he imagined as a posthumous letter to his brother. “Politics never reached me, so I decided to strangle him (…) Brahim, it was you who threw me into his arms the day you burned in the car,” he wrote in his book.
To find
Kangaroo today
Answer
“This book is a cry of love and a cry of anger. Because I still have questions I want to ask him, anger I want to express to him. And because I miss him. But this book is not just a letter to my sister. It is also a social cry that I dedicate to all the heroes of this environment, the mothers who wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning to clean the office, to the fathers who stand in front of the shop to guard, to the young people who take three buses to go to preparatory classes…” he explained to Provence.
READ ALSO “This is police abuse”: following the trail of Villeurbanne BST, the heart of the drug tradeSince then, he has been placed under legal protection. Is this new drama mourning the family of a community activist an attempt at intimidation in the face of Amine Kessaci’s resistance? “If this is the case, we will take further steps,” said Nicolas Bessone, Marseille’s public prosecutor. The mayor, Benoît Payan, spoke of a “new dimension”. One thing remains: the despair of a family who, five years later, are once again suffering the tragic consequences of drug trafficking.
