The Japan Times - Second brother of French anti-drugs activist murdered: prosecutor

France's second largest city is struggling to battle drug crime, with more than a dozen people killed since the start of the year in turf wars and other disputes linked to cocaine and cannabis dealing.

Amine Kessaci, 22, became an activist and Green party member after losing an older brother to a feud between drug traffickers in 2020.

An unidentified gunman killed his youngest brother on Thursday afternoon.

"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.

The murder could have been a "warning" to Kessaci, he said, though adding the investigation was still in the early stages.

The activist had been under police protection since last month after writing a book about the victims of drug trafficking in Marseille, a source following the case told AFP, requesting anonymity because they not authorised to speak to the press.

Kessaci last year told AFP that his older brother Brahim, whose body was found carbonised in a car in 2020, was the only one in a family of six siblings to have fallen into drug trafficking.

"Politics has never extended a hand to me, so I decided to grab it by the throat," he wrote in his book "Marseille, wipe your tears" published last month.

"Brahim, you're the one that threw me into it the day you burnt in a car," he wrote.

Fourteen people have been killed in drug-related crimes since the start of the year in the Marseille region, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Kessaci, who grew up in what he describes as the underserved northern neighbourhoods of Marseille, in 2020 founded a non-governmental organisation called Conscience to help the families of those killed.

He ran as a civil society member on the Greens list in the European elections and parliamentary elections last year, but was unsuccessful both times.

M.Saito--JT