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A 22-year-old French campaigner who established an association to help victims of drug violence has lost a second brother to suspected criminal gangs in Marseille.
Amine Kessaci’s 20-year-old brother Mehdi was parking his car in the city centre when a motorbike drew up and the passenger opened fire with a 9mm pistol.
“A motorbike drew up beside the car of the victim, who had just parked. The backseat passenger on the motorbike shot the victim several times,” Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone said.
Bessone on Friday said the young man had no criminal record. Their elder brother, Brahim, was murdered in 2020.
He was shot and his body was found in a burned-out car, a common method in gang killings known locally as a “barbecue”.
The murder could have been a “warning” to Kessaci, Bessone said. The investigation is still in its early stages.
Activist Kessaci had been under police protection since last month after writing a book about the victims of drug trafficking in Marseille.
Last year he told the media that his older brother Brahim was the only one in a family of six siblings to have fallen into drug trafficking.
Kessaci, who grew up in the northern neighbourhoods of Marseille, founded a non-governmental organisation called Conscience in 2020 to help the families of those killed.
He also ran as a civil society member on the Greens list in the European and parliamentary elections last year, but was unsuccessful in both.
At least 14 people have been killed in drug-related crimes since the start of the year in the Marseille region, according to official figures.