Much of France shrugged its shoulders when two men were shot dead this month in a bar in the bleak northern districts of Marseille. It was just another outbreak of the drug-related gangland violence that scars this beautiful but often lawless city.
Marseille, France’s gateway to the East with its much-photographed old port a powerful magnet for tourists, is accustomed to waking up to news of more killing. On middle-class lips, often enough, is the thought that as long as the hoodlums stick to shooting each other, let them get on with it.
But innocents get caught in the murderous spiral, too. One, Socayna, a law student, was killed by a stray Kalashnikov bullet as she studied at a desk by her bedroom window in September last year. Her alleged killer was 16.
Local resistance
For Amine Kessaci, also a law student, whose brother died in the relentless round of feuding and revenge killing, repugnance at all the deaths reinforces a steely determination to fight for a better, safer future for his fellow Marseillais.
“If we had to back down in the face of violence, we would have given up years ago,” said Mr Kessaci, 21, the driving force behind Conscience, a support group for families touched by the killings.
“We remain motivated and combative. There is no way we will get used to living like this. Nothing is inevitable," he told The National.
Scores of grieving relatives have been comforted by Mr Kessaci, working with fellow volunteers including his Algerian-born mother Wassila, as well as lawyers, psychologists and other professionals.
Their suffering has also provided a focus for a campaign not only to end the retaliatory murders but to press the authorities to improve the precarious existence of people in crime-ridden estates, where drug trafficking underpins a macroeconomy.
Drug dealing is conducted openly on an industrial scale, leading to frequent bloodshed as rival gangs compete for territorial dominance. Prosecutors say a record 49 score-settling killings occurred in 2023, mostly committed by two gangs.
DZ rules
Both the DZ Mafia, its name short for the Arabic for Algeria, and Yoda, named after a Star Wars character, command significant resources of men, weaponry and technological expertise.
DZ Mafia is even said to stage a fireworks display to mark every million euros earned from drug trafficking. Key figures in both gangs, routinely identified by media and ministers but skilled at avoiding prosecution, often direct operations from overseas or prison cells.
There have been breakthroughs for investigators. Yoda’s supposed leader, Felix Bingui, was arrested in Morocco and awaits extradition to France. But a man commonly described as the DZ chief, Abdelatif Mehdi Laribi, is free in Algeria, where strained relations with the former colonial power obstruct judicial co-operation.
Nevertheless, authors of a new book, Tueurs a Gages (Hired killers), published by Flammarion, say direct Algerian and Moroccan connections are slender.
“The links between the Maghreb and these groups lie in the fact that part of the drug imports, particularly hashish, passes through these countries and that the founders of the groups took refuge there for business,” says Jeremie Pham-Le, one of three crime reporters from the newspaper Le Parisien who wrote the book.
The murderers are often young, either gang members charged with revenge operations or acting as contract killers.
Die lucky
The book describes their acceptance of the likelihood of violent death. But life is not especially cheap; a young hitman recruited locally or from the Parisian banlieues might collect between €5,000 and €6,000 ($5,200 to $6,200) for a “hit”, although the price can rise much higher.
“We see the recruitment of teenage killers, murders in broad daylight in full view of all, dissemination of crimes on social networks and a desire to sow terror in opposing clans,” says Mr Pham-Le.
Prosecutors talk of “narcocide” and “narco terrorism” of young men radicalised by crime, as others have been groomed for terrorism. In La Paternelle, one area of the northern district alone, profits can reach €150,000 daily, leading to ever fiercer turf warfare.
In another book, Confessions of a Marseille Gangleader (Max Milo), a drug boss of Algerian origin, writing under the pseudonym Amin Kacem, says: “Being born into a large family of traffickers is a stroke of luck for anyone who wants to practise the profession at a high level. But it is also almost a promise of violent death.”
Mr Kessaci’s brother Brahim was 21 when his was one of two bodies found in the boot of a burnt-out car on the outskirts of the city in 2020.
A third man had also been murdered. His body was sliced with a chainsaw, with chilling images sent to his father.
Brahim had a history of involvement in the drug trade but had attempted to break free of those connections, according to his family.
“My brother's murder was a terrible ordeal that I would never wish on anyone else,” said Mr Kessaci. “It took me time. I had already created Conscience and campaigned in the neighbourhoods but now I was hurt deep inside.
“It took me more than a month before I resumed, joining a march in his memory and of others who had who died. Everyone has their own way of grieving. But even if it is combative, it is no less painful.”
Mr Kessaci wants a return to community policing in place of sporadic, military-style swoops in response to specific crimes. Good public transport links to the rest of Marseille, job creation and a radical plan to deal with wretched housing conditions are among his demands.
Grim North
An attempt to hold the French government liable for a breach of human rights in its handling of the Quartiers Nords (northern districts) was abandoned after a tortuous legal procedure.
“There may have been fewer killings this year, but the war has been lost,” says Mathieu Croizet, a lawyer involved in the case. “There are areas the police, even firemen, will not go because they’ll be stoned. It’s like being in occupied territory; you can find yourself being frisked if you go there.”
A commission of inquiry set up by the French Senate described the drug trade as “a threat to the fundamental interests of the nation”.
The Senate's report this year said the amount of cocaine seized in 2022 was five times greater than 10 years earlier. The drug trade generates an annual turnover estimated at €3.5 billion, with both the trafficking and violence spreading across the country from Marseille and Paris to small towns.
“Not only is our country at a tipping point, but above all the state's response lacks resources, lucidity and coherence,” the report said. It proposed a “shock programme” to end the impunity enjoyed by high-end traffickers, increase intelligence gathering and criminal proceedings, and “finally hit criminals in the wallet”.
Given a magic wand, Amine Kessaci would deliver the localised policing, metro lines, decent housing and jobs the estates need, but also “repair a tiny piece of the broken hearts of the grieving mothers”.
As for the murder of his brother Brahim, he finally sees the investigation leading to possible closure.
“We know who did it, the young women who were accomplices and the man who ordered it,” Amine said. “They will be judged in due course.”
