Amine Kessaci was horrified to read the headlines about a so-called “barbecue”: a killing by drug gangs near his home in the French city of Marseilles, in which two charred, bullet-riddled bodies were found in a torched car.
“I remember thinking about what their mother would feel, reading that word ‘barbecue’,” says Kessaci, a law student who was 17 at the time of the murder, in 2020. “Later that day, I heard for the first time that one of them was probably my brother.”
It was later confirmed that his 22-year-old brother had died in the retaliatory killing after becoming involved in a gang. Since that formative trauma in Kessaci’s life, violence in the southern port city has only worsened.
Drug-related homicides reached an unprecedented 49 in the city in 2023, a 50 per cent rise on the previous year and up from 20 in 2020, as a turf war between local gangs Yoda and DZ Mafia reached a peak, according to police and magistrates.
Although the killings have subsided this year, Marseilles has become the symbol of the challenges French law enforcement faces in combating drug traffickers as consumption rises nationally. Cocaine use and supply has risen, in addition to the top seller, cannabis, which is illegal in France even for personal use. The trade has also spread into smaller towns and rural areas.
The problem of drug-related violence was thrust into the public eye earlier this month when masked gunmen armed with assault rifles killed two prison guards in a brazen daytime attack on a prisoner transport convoy in Normandy. The attackers, who were caught on video, rammed their car into the van at a toll road stop and coolly executed the guards to free Mohamed Amra, aka “The Fly”, an alleged drug trafficker who is being investigated over claims he was linked with another “barbecue” murder in Marseilles.
Such brutal groups often recruit young people from impoverished and immigrant backgrounds.
One 23-year-old former Marseilles gang member, speaking on a contraband phone from prison – where he is serving time for involuntary manslaughter in an unrelated car crash – said he was recruited at 14 to act as a lookout. His pay started at about €100 a day. “I needed money,” he says.
President Emmanuel Macron has twice visited the southern port to highlight the government’s efforts to combat illegal drugs, including in March to promote the Place Nette or Clean Streets campaign of raids to disrupt known dealing spots. Billions have been poured into hiring extra police and court officials, but the extra resources have been overwhelmed by the expanding drug trade.
French senators released a report this month that warned the country risked being “submerged” by illegal drugs despite a rise in seizures by police.
France is not a narco-state but it has some of the characteristics of one
— Senator Etienne Blanc
Senator Jérôme Durain, who co-led the inquiry, says the police and courts were being overwhelmed by the massive resources of drug traffickers, who are estimated to earn annual revenues of €3.5 billion-€6 billion. “The police told us that they were not sufficiently armed to fight the drug gangs – it has become an asymmetric conflict,” says Durain.
He also argues that the approach of arresting small-time dealers, as in the Clean Streets campaign, is ineffective. “We need to go after the bosses and track their money.”
Amra is still on the run, despite a huge manhunt. The incident has fuelled an outcry, with rightwing politicians warning of a slide towards so-called “Mexicanisation”.
The senate report found there was a risk not only that gangs would settle scores with further violence, but that corruption could spread among law enforcement and civil servants.
“The Government needs to wake up to the size and scope of the challenges,” said senator Etienne Blanc, a co-author of the report. “France is not a narco-state but it has some of the characteristics of one.”
Marseilles rose to prominence as a hub for the drugs trade in the 1960s when the so-called French Connection, run by the Corsican mafia, smuggled heroin grown in Asia through the port city to the US.
It is still a transit point today, but also a significant market – one that has begun to export its products and staff to the wider region, which is home to some 400 dealing spots overall, says Bruno Bartocetti, a representative for the Unité SGP Police union in the Provence area.
Violent drug crime now occurs in smaller, previously tranquil cities such as Avignon and Nîmes, where a 10-year-old boy was killed in crossfire last year.
Most of the drugs business in Marseilles is concentrated in the quartiers nords neighbourhoods, which are filled with concrete towers of social housing built mostly in the 1960s to rehouse people living in slums and migrants arriving from France’s former colonies in north Africa.
Dealers ply their trade in barricaded back alleys filled with detritus to prevent police raids. If police clear a dealing spot, it usually pops up again soon afterwards, say locals such as Kessaci, although residents say they welcome the temporary respite provided by these operations.
Kessaci has sought to create change by becoming an activist against drug crime after his brother’s death, and is running in European elections for France’s Green Party. He helps young people sign up to job centres instead of falling prey to gangs.
With unemployment among 15-24-year-olds in the quartiers nords about twice the national average, offering them another route is one of the biggest battles.
Eddy Sid, a police officer and union representative, says gangs are recruiting teenagers from outside Marseilles via social media, luring them with promises of food and board. In a few years, some move up the ladder to become hitmen, being paid thousands.
“The players are getting younger and more disinhibited about violence,” he says. “They used to settle disputes with insults; now it is knives and Kalashnikovs.”
Last September locals, already hardened to violence, were shocked when 24-year-old law student Socayna was killed in her bedroom by a stray bullet as gangs fought over turf.
“It’s creating a huge trauma for everyone who has to live under this rain of bullets,” says Laetitia Linon (43), a cleaner in Marseilles, who co-founded a support group for victims’ families. Her nephew Rayanne was shot dead at the age of 14 after going out to buy a sandwich. “It’s not normal for this to become normal.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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