Gang Murder in Marseilles

CrashOut dives into France's crime capital and interviews the activist whose brother was just assassinated

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Violence by drug gangs in Marseilles has spread fears that the French port is undergoing a “Mexicanization” (yeah sad, but that is now an expression). Niko Vorobyov, who delivered top notch reports on the Italian Mafia and Russian cyber narcos, went into the Marseilles housing projects, and when his main source’s brother was murdered, he hit fast with this piece. As always, Niko blends stellar writing with a street understanding of how the gangsters operate; we are lucky he is in the CrashOut family. IG

By Niko Vorobyov

On Nov. 13, a Thursday afternoon, twenty-year-old Mehdi Kessaci was sitting in his sister’s car parked outside a pharmacy in the working-class neighborhood of Saint-Just, in Marseilles’ troubled Northern Quarters. The young French-Algerian had nothing to do with the criminal underworld – in fact, he wanted to be a policeman. At around 2.30pm, two men wearing motorcycle helmets pulled up on a Yamaha. One of the masked riders stepped off, produced a 9mm pistol, and blasted Mehdi three times in the chest. A fourth bullet struck him in the hand. After the shooters sped away, an ambulance arrived, and paramedics tried desperately to revive the young man. It was no use. Mehdi was pronounced dead an hour later.

The Kessaci name (pronounced keh-sah-si) is well-known in Marseilles, but for the right reasons. Mehdi’s older brother, Amine, is a local community organizer, aspiring politician, and the voice of Marseilles’ marginalized. Amine had been receiving death threats, and in October was placed under police protection. While the investigation is ongoing, it’s thought that Mehdi was hit to get at his brother.

While an innocent life cut short is always heartbreaking, the pain of the Kessaci family must be unimaginable: this is the second time they’ve lost a son in five years. In December 2020, Amine’s older brother Brahim disappeared, his charred body later found “barbecued” – Marseilles gangland slang for when a car is torched with a body inside – next to his friend Reda. A third victim of the triple-slaying was dismembered with a chainsaw, the ghastly images sent to his traumatized father.

I interviewed Amine in August when I went to Marseilles to investigate how a European city suffers such brutal gang violence. Amine described how his older brother, who was involved with the dealers, was sadly typical of those from Marseilles’ concrete housing blocks of mostly immigrant families.

“I want to shine a light on my brother, because there are hundreds of families like mine who’ve lived through the same thing. But many don’t want to or have the strength to talk about it,” Amine told me.

“[Brahim] wanted to shield Amine, to protect him from mixing with the same people he had,” added Amine’s friend and social worker Eric Vitale.

Marseilles has a long and colorful gangster history since at least the nineteenth century, when the nervi – knife-wielding ruffians with typically Italian surnames – prowled the Vieux Port. After World War Two, narcotics became a big business, and Marseilles was at the heart of the French Connection, the heroin pipeline connecting the syringe-strewn alleyways of New York to the poppy fields of Anatolia. But this is a story about the new narcos, the alienated youngsters from Marseilles’ deprived, crime-ridden northern districts that have stirred fear of the “Mexicanization” of France.

Algeria Versus Star Wars

I dropped by Marseilles this summer to visit some friends, see the cyan-blue coves of the Calanques national park, and meet Amine, whom I’d read a lot about. He is still young – only 21-years-old – positive and upbeat. We met at his…

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