In the southern French port city of Marseille, a brutal act of gang violence unfolded, which saw a 15-year-old stabbed 50 times and then burned alive. Then, in a related incident, a deliveryman was shot and killed after he refused to take a 14-year-old and his accomplice to partake in a revenge killing.
Police believe the two incidents are tied to explosive drug-related violence in the port city, according to Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone, who spoke at a press conference on Sunday.
“The crime committed on Wednesday was apparently the result of drug-related violence,” said Marseille prosecutor Nicolas Bessone at a press conference on Sunday. He spoke of “unprecedented cruelty.”
“Chronologically, the facts are as follows. Firstly, they are part of the current conflict between the DSN Algerian mafia and the so-called Blacks clan of the Félix Piat housing estate in Marseille’s 3rd arrondissement, in the broadest sense of the term, particularly over control of the Moulin de Mai drug dealing center,” said Bessone.
The details of both cases are shocking and speak to a degree of brutality in French society that will surely raise questions about mass immigration and sprawling gang violence.
In the first case, the 15-year-old victim was reportedly hired on social media by a 23-year-old prison inmate. The inmate, who says he belongs to the DZ Mafia, hired a 15-year-old to intimidate a rival gang member by setting fire to his apartment door. He was promised €2,000 to commit this arson. According to the French public prosecutor’s office, the 15-year-old was discovered by members of a rival gang, who then stabbed the boy 50 times and burned him alive, according to French publication La Provence.
However, the score-settling did not end there, and in fact, led to another violent murder. After the 15-year-old died, the same DZ Mafia prisoner recruited another youth, this time 14 years old, to take revenge for the first murder. The 14-year-old was recruited to kill a rival Blacks gang member, with the prisoner this time upping the reward to €50,000.
However, this planned killing also resulted in tragedy. The 14-year-old hired a 36-year-old father of four to serve as a driver in the gangland hit, but the father had no idea he would be employed in a murder. Once the 14-year-old got into the vehicle, along with an accomplice, the father apparently became aware of the crime that was unfolding and refused to drive the youth.
The 14-year-old then pulled out a .357 Magnum pistol and shot the driver in the head, killing him. The victim, 36-year-old Nessim Ramdane, was an amateur footballer who played for Athlético de Marseille,
What happened next is extraordinary. The driver’s vehicle rammed into a wall, but the gunman and his accomplice fled the scene. The police then received a tip from an unlikely source where the gunman was hiding. The prisoner who ordered the hit actually called to “snitch” on his own hitman since the hitman did not fulfill his contract and kill the target.
The prisoner told the police the hitman was hiding a few hundred meters from the crime scene, on rue de Crimée, and he even noted that the gun used in the crime was inside a nearby trashcan.
All of the information was accurate and video surveillance helped police pinpoint where the suspect was hiding. The police said the young suspect was recruited through Snapchat, which is now a common practice among the DZ Mafia, who often look for youths who are living outside of Marseilles.
The sporting director of his club, Carnoux FC, reacted: “Our sadness is on a par with the image of this man, upright and respectful, whose values have always forced the admiration of those who knew him.”
Marseille is the second largest and one of the poorest cities in France, with drug-related gang violence now a common occurrence. Gangs are currently fighting for control of the lucrative drug trade.
Prosecutor Bessone said the perpetrators and victims of this violence are getting younger and younger, in part to ensure these youths are not prosecuted as adults.
With these two latest deaths, the number of violent deaths in Marseille related to drug trafficking has risen to 17 since the beginning of the year. Last year, there were 49 such deaths.
“Here too, to put it very simply, we and the criminal investigation department believe that the vast majority of retaliatory violence and drug murders that have taken place in the Marseille area are directly or indirectly linked to this conflict,” said Bessone.
