Marseille under fire: how many deaths will it take to bring about change?

The murder of a 20-year-old man in the 4ᵉ arrondissement of Paris. Marseille, on November 13, plunged the city back into the turmoil of the drug trafficking murderer. The victim, Mehdi Kessaci, was the younger brother of the activist Amine Kessaci, figurehead of the the fight against narcobanditism, whose family has now been struck twice by extreme violence. His older brother, Brahim, had been murdered five years earlier in another drug-related killing.

Mehdi was shot dead in broad daylight as he parked a car near the County Council. Two men on motorcycles stopped and one of them opened fire with a 9 mm pistol, hitting the young man several times. Despite the rapid intervention of the emergency services, he could not be saved. Unknown to the police and with no criminal record, he was hoping to join the forces of law and order, and was preparing to retake the entrance exam.

For investigators, the possibility of a targeted warning is real. The Marseille public prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, confirmed that ’there is no doubt that this is a premeditated murder. We are dealing with a contract that was carried out on this young man«.

Such a hypothesis raises fears that criminal groups are stepping up their methods by targeting those close to public figures who denounce the influence of the drug trafficking.

The emergence of a young voice against violence

At just 22 years of age, Amine Kessaci has become a leading figure in Marseille. A native of Frais Vallon, he founded the Conscience association as a teenager to help young people escape the clutches of organized crime and support families devastated by shootings. His activism intensified after Brahim's murder in 2020, an event he describes as the catalyst for his political commitment.

His speeches attracted national attention. At the Emmanuel Macron to visit Marseille in 2021, He urged the president: «There's no point in coming with a plan that was made on a plane... You have to build this plan with us».

His approach marked the emergence of a new generation refusing to accept the fatalism surrounding drug trafficking. and its effects on their neighborhoods.

Since then, Amine Kessaci ran in elections under the banner of Ecologistes, then Nouveau Front Populaire. He has also recently published Marseille, wipe away your tears. Living and dying in the land of drug trafficking, a book that blends testimony and political criticism. In the weeks leading up to his brother's death, he was living under police protection due to explicit threats linked to his activism.

The endless cycle of violence in Marseille

Mehdi's murder is the 14ᵉ drug-related homicide recorded this year in Marseille, a striking illustration of a city caught in a cycle of territorial wars, reprisals and the proliferation of very young gunmen. Local authorities, including the deputy director of police and mayor Benoît Payan, immediately went to the scene of the crime, denouncing the seriousness of a case that has shocked even a city long accustomed to violence.

For many local residents and stakeholders, this tragedy once again exposes the limits of traditional responses to drug trafficking. Police operations, reinforced patrols and large-scale «Clean Sweep» campaigns have so far failed to failed to curb network expansion nor to prevent the escalation of murders. As one magistrate told Blast: «We've been doing the same thing for 20 years... and it's not going anywhere.»

Associations, judges and some political voices are calling for deeper structural solutions, tackling poverty, economic exclusion and the entrenched networks that thrive where the state withdraws. The debate on possible regulatory or alternative frameworks resurfaces whenever violence reaches its climax, without however leading to any substantial political transformation.

The effects of prohibition

Numerous academic and encyclopedic works have long described the paradoxical effects of drug prohibition.

According to the’Encyclopaedia Britannica, strict prohibitions have historically driven markets underground, where products are controlled not by institutions, but by criminal groups who thrive on scarcity and high profit margins.

L’Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology similarly notes that prohibition «tends to increase violence by transferring market regulation from state authorities to armed groups», a pattern observed in countries as diverse as the USA during alcohol prohibition, Mexico in the 2000s and European port cities facing competition between networks.

These analyses neither argue for nor against a specific policy, but highlight a recurring structural mechanism: when a banned market remains highly profitable, repression alone fails to eliminate demand, while criminal organizations consolidate their control through coercion.

The situation in Marseille, with its well-established drug trade and recurring vendettas, is often cited by researchers as a European example of this dynamic.

The pain of a family, the mirror of a city

For the Kessaci family, November's tragedy rekindles unbearable grief. «No mother should have to go through this: losing two children,» said city councillor Christine Juste. Those close to the family describe Mehdi as a committed young man, who supported his brother's fight and actively participated in Conscience.

Beyond individual pain, this case reveals the long-term human cost of the drug trafficking and their prohibition on communities in working-class neighbourhoods of Marseille. Each murder is not just a statistic, but a fracture in families, in collective confidence and in the fragile efforts to reclaim these territories from the grip of criminal economies.

While’Amine Kessaci cries another brother, many fear what this attack means for the militants who refuse to be silenced. And once again, Marseille , often used to deploy new anti-drug communication operations, faces an inescapable question: how many tragedies will it take before real solutions emerge?