“Narchomicide”: after the death of Nessim and a teenager “burned alive”… this term says a lot about drug trafficking

On October 4, 2024, a VTC driver was killed in his vehicle after refusing to transport two people suspected of drug trafficking. The suspect, aged 14, was identified as the author of the fatal shooting. This new episode marks a turning point in the treatment of "narcohomicides". We explain.

Nessim Ramdane is one of the latest in a long list of victims of drug trafficking. The thirty-year-old was a VTC driver in Marseille, and it was during his service that he was shot dead after having a bad encounter.

Another murder also made headlines this weekend, especially considering the age of the victim: 15 years old. “Stabbed with 50 stab wounds”, the teenager was “burned alive” in the Phocaean city.

These crimes, of an “unprecedented savagery” according to the words of the public prosecutor Nicolas Besson, are narchomicides. A neologism linking murder and drug trafficking.

Describing a type of violence

According to Libération, this new term is used by the Marseille justice system to describe settling scores against a backdrop of drug trafficking. It was Nicolas Besson's predecessor, Dominique Laurens, who officially introduced its use in 2023, after a wave of deadly shootings in Marseille.

It is the contraction of "narcotrafficking" or "narcobanditism&quot and "d’homicide". The suffix "cide" referring in several terms of the French language to the fact of killing: feminicide (woman), parricide (father), matricide (father), infanticide (child), suicide (self), regicide (king)… 

Rather than calling the victims “settlers,” notes France 24, “the word narchomicide” allows us to take into account other deaths linked to drug trafficking. People not involved in drug trafficking are sometimes its collateral victims: from a stray bullet, from an armed criminal encountered by chance, after witnessing a confidential exchange between traffickers…

Figures to be qualified

In 2023, the Director General of the National Police, Frédéric Veaux, deplored a 57% increase in homicides or attempted homicides linked to drug trafficking. 315 facts had been recorded, notes France Info.

Our colleagues add that during the first six months of the year 2024, according to the Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime, 42 victims of drug trafficking died. A decrease compared to the first half of 2023.

"For the first six months of 2024, 182 cases of murder or attempted murder were committed across the country", notes the head of the office, Yann Sourisseau. Down compared to 2023, certainly, but still up 22% compared to 2022.

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