Nessim Ramdane was killed by a hitman aged only 14. This Tuesday, the funeral of the VTC driver was held at the Mediterranean mosque in Marseille, four days after his murder. Around 500 people gathered alongside the wife and three children of this 36-year-old father, collateral victim of a settling of scores linked to drug trafficking.
“He had nothing to do with all this vulgarity and barbarity,” said Ali Benattia, 72, who introduced himself as the uncle of the deceased. He describes Nessim Ramdane as a hardworking man ready to sacrifice himself for the well-being of his wife and children, recounting that he went so far as to hold three jobs at the same time at one time.
A football fan
He was an emblematic figure of local football, recalls Ali Benattia. Passionate about football since his childhood, Nessim Ramdane wore the jerseys of many clubs in the region during his amateur career and coached the children of the Saint-Zacharie club (Var), where he lived with his family, explains the uncle.
Around 2 p.m., under clear skies, several dozen men knelt in a row inside the two basketball courts adjacent to the mosque to lead the funeral prayer. Men then transported the body of Nessim Ramdane in a white coffin to place it in front of the crowd, at the feet of the mosque’s imam, Boualem Khatir.
“It’s not humane to do that”
“It is time to pull ourselves together, youth,” he said during his funeral sermon, before the body of Nessim Ramdane was taken away for burial. Nessim Ramdane, driving a VTC on the evening of his death, took for a ride a 14-year-old teenager charged with killing a member of a gang involved in drug trafficking which plagues certain poor neighborhoods of the second city of France.
The minor, accompanied by another teenager, allegedly asked the driver to drop them off at the contract location and wait for them, but the father refused and shot him fatally in the back of the head. “I don’t understand how a boy of my age could make such a serious decision,” lamented Yanel Benattia, 14, cousin of the victim. “We can forgive him, but it’s not human to do that.”