Aix-en-Provence (AFP) – “I have two deaths: Mehdi, Brahim!” Ouassila Benhmadi-Kessaci cried out her despair on Monday before the Aix-en-Provence criminal court, recalling her sons killed five years apart. Faced with his pain and that of other mothers of victims, an accused spoke his truth.

Published on: 02/11/2026 - 23:56

After two weeks of trial in this emblematic case of the violence of narchomicides, today's hearing is marked by strong emotion: the three mothers who lost their son, involved in drug trafficking and killed in an ambush near Marseille at the end of 2020, testified to "a life that no longer has meaning" and demanded answers from the five accused.

Surprising scene: after hearing their statements, the alleged perpetrators of this triple assassination, including two figures from Marseille drug trafficking, in turn presented “apologies to all mothers”.

Even more unexpected, one accused, Zakaria Bensaci, for the first time named, without blinking, two of the men sitting in the box next to him as those primarily responsible for this planned execution.

“The person who shot is Oualane, the person who ordered it is Harrat,” he said before launching into the story of the fatal night.

"Barbecue"

Drug trafficker with a long criminal record Amine Oualane has become one of the alleged leaders of the criminal organization DZ Mafia from 2023. Karim Harrat alias "Rantanplan", considered a figure of Marseille narcobanditism, is suspected of several score-settling.

Both deny their involvement in the triple assassination of December 2020 which notably cost the life of Brahim Chabane, brother of anti-trafficking activist Amine Kessaci.

When Oussila Benhmadi-Kessaci learned of Brahim's death, she did not initially understand the expression "barbecue" used in the newspapers. It was the police who made him understand the circumstances of the death of his 22-year-old eldest, found burned with a bullet in the head.

“I lost half of me, my soul, he left me a little girl who was one year old, it hurts when I see her” today, confided Ms. Benhmadi-Kessaci, her voice tight.

At the helm, she paints the portrait of her son as a protective big brother, who saw Amine, already committed against drug trafficking in the cities, as a future "president". She also recounts her efforts to keep him away from bad company. “I went out at 1 a.m. so that he wouldn’t fall for the deal,” to the point of finding herself one day face to face with a young man armed with a “Kalashnikov.”

“Incapable of smiling” after Brahim’s death, she leaves her job as a restaurateur. She has since chaired “Conscience”, the association launched by Amine Kessaci which supports families who are victims of drug trafficking.

Butcher's leaf

With this experience, she was ready to “forgive all the accused” by listening to their bumpy journeys, she told the Court.

This leniency was shattered after the death of his youngest son Mehdi, a 20-year-old young man completely unrelated to trafficking, killed by several bullets in Marseille in November 2025. His death caused a shock wave in the Marseille city and in France.

“I can’t forgive, they killed an innocent person who passed his baccalaureate, who wanted to be a peacekeeper,” she says.

Amine Oualane is one of the leads studied in the investigation, still ongoing, into the assassination of Mehdi Kessaci.

The mother of Réda Khaldi, one of the three victims in 2020, was unable to see her son's remains due to the state of decomposition of his body. “I’m depressed,” murmurs the woman who resigned from her job in a Marseille hospital.

For the mother of Yassine Loubani, whose body was found in pieces and charred, "the sky is falling on her head". She is now demanding that justice be done: “Nassim will not come back.”

Another accused, Malika Kariba, nicknamed "the butcher", who had already admitted to having dismembered one of the victims with a "butcher's sheet", explained on Monday that he had hidden the body parts in "supermarket bags".

The trial schedule has fallen behind schedule. The verdict, initially expected on November 6, could be postponed to November 13.

© 2026 AFP

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