French Activist Vows to Fight Drugs Violence After Losing Two Brothers

Wed Nov 19 2025 21:17:01 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

Amine Kessaci, a prominent anti-drugs activist from Marseille, refuses to back down in the face of escalating violence following the killings of his brothers. His bold stance aims to shed light on the dire realities of drug-related crime in France.

Amine Kessaci, a 22-year-old anti-drugs campaigner, has vowed to continue speaking out against drug violence after the tragic murder of his younger brother, Mehdi, in Marseille. Following a similar fate for his elder brother, Brahim, Kessaci calls for action against the rampant drug trade that plagues French communities. Despite facing personal threats, he advocates for courage and governmental action, as the drug crisis reaches alarming levels in the country.

A prominent French anti-drugs campaigner whose brother was killed by drugs criminals last week, five years after the murder of his elder brother, has vowed to stand up to intimidation and 'keep telling the truth about drugs violence.'

Amine Kessaci, 22, was writing in Le Monde newspaper a day after the funeral of his younger brother Mehdi, whose murder last week has been described by the government as a turning-point in France's drugs wars.

'Yesterday I lost my brother. Today I speak out,' he wrote in his opinion piece.

'[The drugs-traffickers] strike at us in order to break, to tame, to subdue. They want to wipe out any resistance, to break any free spirit, to kill in the egg any embryo of revolt.'

Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was shot dead last Wednesday as he parked his car in central Marseille in what appears to have been a warning or punishment aimed at his older brother, Amine, from the city's drugs gangs.

Speaking after a ministerial meeting on drugs crime at the Elysée palace on Tuesday, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said: 'We all agreed that this premeditated murder was something totally new. It's clearly a crime of intimidation. It's a new level of violence.'

Mehdi was the second Kessaci brother to be killed by drugs criminals. In 2020 the body of Brahim Kessaci, then 22, was found in a burnt-out car. That murder prompted Amine to launch his association, Conscience, which aims to expose the damage to working-class communities caused by gangs.

Marseille is renowned for worsening drugs wars, and Amine Kessaci recently wrote a book called 'Marseille Wipe your Tears – Life and Death in a Land of Drugs.'

In his Le Monde article, Amine revealed he was recently warned by police to leave Marseille because of threats to his life. He attended his younger brother's funeral wearing a bullet-proof jacket and under heavy police protection.

'I speak because I have no choice but to fight if I don't want to die. I speak because I know that silence is the refuge of our enemies,' he wrote, urging courage from citizens, and action from the government.

Mehdi Kessaci's murder has brought the national spotlight back on a drugs trafficking problem that French experts and ministers agree is reaching almost unmanageable proportions.

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday launched a broadside against such consumers, telling the weekly cabinet meeting that 'sometimes it is the city-centre bourgeoisie that is funding the traffickers.'

Macron had called a special drugs summit the day before in response to Amine's murder and in order to review progress on a new anti-drugs law that was passed in June. It sets up a special prosecutor's office dedicated to organised crime - similar to the office that tackles terrorism - which will eventually have 30 specialised magistrates.