On Thursday 13 November, shortly after 2.30pm, Mehdi Kessaci parked his car in the city centre, next to a concert hall. As he was about to get out of the car, a motorbike with two passengers passed in front of the window and one of them opened fire with a 9 mm caliber pistol. Kessaci, 20, brother of an anti-drug activist from Marseille, died instantly. The motorbike disappeared. Investigators concluded that the attack was premeditated and with professional means. City Attorney Nicolas Bessone went further and called the episode “intimidating.”
Thursday’s murder represents a quantum leap in the threat posed by organized crime in Marseille. This Tuesday, Emmanuel Macron called an emergency meeting at the Elysée with several ministers, as well as several police officials and the Marseille Prosecutor’s Office. “It was not a classic showdown, but an intimidating crime. And this is a clear turning point. A prepared and unprecedented death. We tried to analyze the reasons that may have led to this point. He was the brother of someone who opposed drug trafficking, and it is clear that the drug traffickers who direct Marseille crime are increasingly dangerous”, admitted the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez.
The suspicion is that Mehdi was an indirect target, victim of the actions of his brother Amine, Amine Kessaci, two years older than him, a well-known figure in the fight against drug trafficking in the working-class neighborhoods of Marseille and an emerging voice in local politics (he is a candidate for deputy). The young man who was shot dead was preparing to reapply for the peacekeeper (police officer who maintains public order) competition in 2026, after failing in a first attempt in 2025.
The deputy prefect of police Corinne Simon intervened on the scene. So did the mayor of Marseille, Benoît Payan (Divers gauche), who knows Amine Kessaci well having supported him in the 2024 legislative elections, in which he ran under the label of the New Popular Front (NFP). “It is a tragedy for the family, for his mother, for Amine, for all the people of Marseille. This young man of 20 wanted to be a policeman, he had worked this summer to pay for the car,” said the mayor Le Mondebefore issuing a warning: “If the investigation confirms that this is an intimidating murder, of a desire to silence Amine, we collectively enter another dimension, and this is very worrying. Marseille refers to the time of the murder of Judge Michel (in 1981, when he was responsible for drug matters). It is a challenge to the rule of law that requires adequate responses.”
The strange thing is that Amine Kessaci did not appear to be a direct threat to the drug trade, its finances or its organization. However, he had been protected by the police since August. Through parallel investigations, threats against him had emerged. He was out of town Thursday. “The situation has never been so serious. We have never experienced it. They directly attack an innocent person. It’s not a stray bullet, someone involved in drug trafficking. We are afraid, we don’t dare to speak anymore. We don’t want to become the target of gangs for taking a public stand against drug trafficking. Even less that they attack our relatives,” says Mohamed Benmedoour, a social educator who worked in high-crime neighborhoods. “The meeting? Look, we no longer believe in anything. It’s not the first time. We’ve already seen President Macron come to Marseille on other occasions. The measures adopted so far are ineffective. The State doesn’t help the small associations in the area, it prefers to finance large structures that are useless. I don’t know if I’ll continue, it’s not worth risking my life”, he complains.
Is there an organization today confident enough in its power to indulge in this type of intimidation? The answer leads to the DZ mafia, a hegemonic group already in Marseille and in the south of France which controls drug trafficking after having exterminated rival gangs. The police have few doubts. “It’s something truly mafia-like. The paradox is that there are fewer deaths, but at a corporate level there are more. The DZ mafia liquidated the other group in 2024 and today it is alone. It develops its business and its propaganda as it wants. And this is very disturbing. We are facing a paradigm shift. The problem is that it will lead many people to give up their political or activist ambitions,” a police source tells EL PAÍS.
The leap in quality leads directly to the concept of the mafia and the methods used in Italy for years. Also in Corsica and in the Eighties, in Marseille. On October 21, 1981, two armed men aboard a large-displacement motorcycle shot and killed investigating judge Pierre Michel in an avenue in Marseille. The magistrate, said the Frenchman Eliot Nesshe carried out a stubborn crusade against the drug trafficking mafia in Marseille and, in particular, against one of the big bosses of the business, Gaëtan Tany Zampa, of Italian origin.
Those were the times when Marseille was the laboratory for heroin that was distributed in the United States, sort of center known internationally as French Connection (just like William Friedkin’s film with Gene Hackman). The port, the central location on the Mediterranean and an urban and social configuration have always been a magnet for crime. The problem is that the situation has only gotten worse since then. Also due to poverty and the aging of the urban fabric built to accommodate Algerian citizens.
