Is cannabis driving a rise in revenge killings?
Ouassila Kessaci, 57, will never forget the agonising wait to confirm the death of her eldest son. On 29 December 2020, 22-year-old Brahim left the apartment saying he would be back — but the next day, Kessaci received a panicked call from Brahim’s wife, who believed Brahim was dead. “It really shocked me,” recalls Kessaci. “She shook me up.”
Over the next four days, Kessaci frantically called the police until they finally identified her son. He’d been murdered, and his body had been burned inside a car just off the main highway north of Marseille. He, along with two of his friends, had been victims of what the French police coldly call a règlement de comptes — literally a “settling of scores” — in the drug trade. Kessaci acknowledges her son was “in with a bad crowd”, but insists he wasn’t the primary target.
