France ministers say in ‘tough battle’ against drugs after murder

France's Justice minister Gerald Darmanin leaves the weekly cabinet meeting, Wednesday, March 19, 2025 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

MARSEILLE - French ministers Thursday pledged action to stamp out drug crime in the southern city of Marseille after the killing of the brother of an anti-narcotics activist.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that the hit that killed Mehdi Kessaci, 20, was ordered from the “top” of the criminal hierarchy, a top prosecutor has said, to intimidate his older brother Amine Kessaci, 22, into silence.

Marseille has been 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.

French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin described drug crime as a threat “at least equivalent to terrorism”, as he and Interior Minister Laurent Nunez visited the city.

“We are struggling to win a very, very tough battle,” he said.

Nunez added: “The system we are putting in place is entirely similar to what we have implemented in counter-terrorism.”

They said a new anti-drugs law would see a specialised prosecutor’s office start handling narcotics crime in Paris from January.

Darmanin said they would also dispatch more magistrates and court clerks to the port city, but did not say how many.

Both however defended the state’s record, saying drug-related murders in the Marseille region had dropped over recent years.

The rate has decreased from 50 killings in 2023 to 24 last year, to a little more than a dozen since January, according to an AFP tally.

High-security jails

Mentioning a gang called DZ Mafia that manages most dealing spots in Marseille, Darmanin said 27 of those who ran it were in French prisons, including 21 in a supermax jail in the northern town of Vendin-le-Vieil.

Darmanin has been pushing to move the country’s biggest drug traffickers to high-security prisons where cell phone signals are jammed.

He said better control in detention was also key.

“Drug traffickers, especially the leaders who oversee the dealing points and order these assassinations, are rarely casually sipping a coffee in the streets of Marseille, Saint-Tropez, or Paris,” he added.

“They are in one of two places: either in prison or abroad.”

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said earlier on Thursday that investigators specialised in organised crime had been tasked with the probe to investigate the possibility of someone “at the top of the organised crime spectrum” being behind the killing.

The murder last week has alarmed authorities and civil society in France’s second-largest city.

But Amine Kessaci, the campaigner and Greens party member who buried his little brother earlier this week, has vowed to continue to speak out.

He threw himself into activism after the 2020 murder of his older half-brother Brahim, who had fallen into drug dealing in a case that still has to go to court.