Amine Kessaci: a cry from the heart of the northern districts, a call to collective conscience

In the narrow streets of Frais-Vallon, where the tarmac still seems to carry the echoes of a shared childhood, I grew up just a few metres from where Amine Kessaci was born. The same school benches, the same stairwells, the same thick silences that wrap themselves around the northern districts of Marseille. My first brush with the drug trade came as early as Year 7, at the Jacques Prévert middle school. Not yet everywhere, but already there, just beneath the surface. In the schoolyard, in people's eyes, in the detours toward the pine wood nearby.

So when, a few weeks ago, I saw Amine's name surface in my news feed, it was more than a headline. It was a reminder. Brutal. Physical.

I first heard of Amine just before his book came out, Marseille, essuie tes larmes. The title grabbed me. I ordered it, I read it over a few evenings. It was raw, unvarnished, and clear-eyed in a way that unsettles. Not a manifesto of the moment, but a precise dissection of what drug trafficking does to a city, to a generation, to a family. You could feel this was no pose: it was a cry.

I had told myself I would write to him. That I would take the time to say thank you, simply, for what he had set down in black and white.

And then Mehdi was murdered. Twenty years old. In broad daylight. Like a hammer blow.

So no, I did not write to him. Because in moments like that, you feel almost like an intruder. You do not dare disturb the silence of a grief that cuts you to the bone. Because sometimes there are pains you honour by stepping back. But that step aside takes nothing away from the admiration.

Today, I am making up for it as best I can. With these words.

Who is Amine Kessaci, the voice of Marseille's northern districts?

Amine is no "armchair activist". Born in 2003, he belongs to that generation that refuses to give up. After the death of his older brother Brahim in 2020, killed against a backdrop of score-settling tied to the drug trade, he created the Association Conscience, to raise the alarm about the grip of drug trafficking and the silent damage it inflicts on our neighbourhoods. His book, "Marseille, essuie tes larmes", published in October 2025 by Le Bruit du Monde, is not a theoretical essay: it is a mapping of the real, a cry of urgency sent up from the belly of the city.

He speaks of the tower blocks of Frais-Vallon not as a backdrop of misery, but as witnesses to abandonment. An absent State. Fractured families. Young lives sacrificed in a system where violence is promoted as the only way up.

His commitment did not stop at the pages of a book. In June 2024, he stood in the parliamentary elections in the Bouches-du-Rhône for the Greens, within the Nouveau Front populaire, narrowly losing in the second round to the Rassemblement national. The fight against drug trafficking became his public battle, waged with his face uncovered, in a city where that choice comes at a price.

Why does Amine Kessaci refuse to stay silent?

On 13 November 2025, in the early afternoon, Mehdi Kessaci, twenty years old, was shot several times in the 4th arrondissement of Marseille by two helmeted men. The Marseille public prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, opened an investigation for murder by an organised gang and did not rule out the hypothesis of a "warning killing" meant to silence Amine, who had been under police protection for several weeks.

Despite the pain, despite the threats, Amine held firm. He declared:

"No, I will not stay silent. I will say and say again that my brother Mehdi died for nothing. I will speak of the violence of drug trafficking."

His words carried beyond the walls. The European Parliament heard them. At the opening of the plenary session of 24 November 2025, after a minute of silence in memory of Mehdi, President Roberta Metsola paid tribute to Amine, saluting the courage of a young man who risks his life in his fight against organised drug trafficking in France.

But in the French media? Silence.
On social networks? Silence.
Among those who claim to speak "in the name of the neighbourhoods"? A guilty muteness.

Culture of silence, or culture of denial?

This silence is all the more unbearable because it sometimes comes from those who, through posturing or strategy, help to normalise the unspeakable.

We glorify an imagined version of the neighbourhoods where making do flirts with danger, where the "business" becomes folklore. Cultural figures, local or national, adopt a rhetoric that glorifies the illegal, without ever owning the consequences. We romanticise violence, we stylise the deal, we celebrate transgression.

Meanwhile, the bodies fall.

And families bury their children.

Amine, for his part, refuses this logic. In his book, he speaks of the stories that ensnare, of the role models that trap. He calls for smashing the distorting mirror, for taking back control of the imagination.

And it has to be said: to this day, no major media, cultural or sporting figure has publicly taken a stand after Mehdi's death.

Not a word. Not a line. Nothing.

Outrage of variable geometry

This silence is not only cultural. It is also political.

Yes, elected officials were there, at the silent march of 22 November 2025, which drew more than 6,000 people into the streets of Marseille, from Marine Tondelier to Olivier Faure, from François Ruffin to Benoît Payan. Yes, words were spoken. But behind the slogans, what remains? Weak policies, PR stunts, "neighbourhood plans" that change their name every three years but never their substance.

Amine does not mince his words:

"The State must acknowledge the failure of its actions."

And he is right. Because by dint of tolerating the intolerable, of talking about "risk reduction" without talking about reducing the networks, we create the conditions for these tragedies.
"Marseille, essuie tes larmes."
It is not just a turn of phrase. It is a testament.
A call for this city to stop accepting the unacceptable.

What does the investigation into Mehdi Kessaci's death reveal?

The months that followed gave this tragedy an even more chilling depth. According to revelations from the investigation reported by Le Monde, the killers were acting on a contract worth 100,000 euros that targeted not Mehdi, but Amine himself. The mistaken-target theory is being taken seriously: a phone line used by Mehdi was administratively registered in his older brother's name, under a family plan. Two teams of killers are even said to have been set in competition with each other. Other sources urge caution and point out that this hypothesis is being examined like all the others, with no priority.

In March 2026, ten people were taken into police custody as part of the investigation, followed by a new wave of arrests. Amine, for his part, denounced "extremely serious" leaks about the case and filed a complaint.

That a man's death could be ordered for such a sum, and his little brother gunned down in his place, says enough about the machinery his book describes: violence turned into management, a human life reduced to a line in a ledger.

Not looking away

I am not a distant observer. I am a child of these streets.
And as in cybersecurity, there are flaws we choose to ignore. Until it is too late.
The drug trade is a breach. A social breach. A moral breach. A political breach.

To ignore Amine Kessaci is to widen it.

To support him is to close it, word after word, action after action.

To Amine, this modest tribute.
Your book is a beacon. A beacon for those who, like us, refuse to accept fate.
Mehdi and Brahim did not die for nothing if your voice endures.
And we, children of Frais-Vallon, must keep wiping away these tears, not to resign ourselves, but to rebuild.

"Marseille, essuie tes larmes - Vivre et mourir en terre de narcotrafic"

To read. To share. To support.

• Christophe Mazzola
  Cybersecurity expert, author of Être en cybersécurité, born in Marseille, son of the northern districts.

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Sources

• Murder of Mehdi Kessaci, circumstances and the "warning killing" hypothesis targeting Amine: Euronews, 14 November 2025.
• Silent march of 22 November 2025, more than 6,000 people: France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur / franceinfo ; Ligue des droits de l'Homme.
• Roberta Metsola's tribute, opening of the plenary session of 24 November 2025: European Parliament.
• Contract worth 100,000 euros, two teams and the mistaken-target theory: France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Le Monde investigation.
• Police custody in the investigation: CNews, 23 March 2026 ; Amine Kessaci's complaint over the leaks: Orange Actualités.
• Amine Kessaci's background, Association Conscience and the 2024 parliamentary elections: Wikipedia, Amine Kessaci.
• "Marseille, essuie tes larmes - Vivre et mourir en terre de narcotrafic", Le Bruit du Monde, October 2025: lebruitdumonde.com.