The video depicts the cruel reality of life in the ghettos, where drugs and violence are omnipresent, and it features a sequence in which a young drug-dealer steals a bag of drugs from a lady who was 'looking after it' for other drug-dealers. His identity is discovered and there follows a scene in which he is abducted by armed men, driven to a lonely spot outside the city after being handcuffed and beaten up, thrust down onto the the ground, and shot in the head as payback. The killers then pour petrol over his body and set it alight before leaving the scene.
The 'victim' was played by 19-year-old Nabil Sedik, a young man from one of Marseille's poorer areas, and the drug-minding woman was played by his mother.
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The harrowing scenes contained in the video were of course fictional, and Nabil Sedik walked away unscathed from that fictional killing field, but real life underworld revenge killings such as that shown in it are not the stuff of fiction. They are a fact of life, and they have occurred every 10 days in Marseille since January of last year. The most recent of those executions took place a few days ago, when a young man was kidnapped in Marseille. His body was later discovered in the boot of a burnt-out car. He had been shot to death.
His name? Nabil Sedik.
His mother buried him on Tuesday.
