Beachside Brawl Turns Deadly: Moroccan Man Jailed for Cousin’s Killing

The events occurred while the accused and the victim were each on vacation in Morocco. The two cousins, who were in conflict, met up on the beach in Al Hoceima. It was at this location that Soufiane, "excited and aggressive" according to the judge, provoked Hicham, 25 years old. This was followed by a fight during which the victim was stabbed in the chest with a knife. The young man died shortly afterwards.

According to several witnesses, Soufiane B. had approached Hicham with a knife and stabbed him. But their statements later varied. The defendant’s lawyer had requested that the depositions collected in Morocco not be taken into account, stressing that the Moroccan police had put pressure on the witnesses. The lawyer had not been allowed to attend these interrogations in Morocco.

The court blames the accused for having provoked the fight with the victim and for having evaded the Moroccan authorities. "He only presented himself when the case had attracted a lot of attention on social networks and there were explosions in front of his home. It was only after being certain that the Netherlands would take over the Moroccan procedure that he began to speak, in a piecemeal manner."

"It is not established that the suspect stabbed in such a way that he had the intention (even conditional) to kill," the judge ruled, who qualified the facts, not as murder or voluntary manslaughter, but as "assault resulting in death." For this reason, he decided to sentence Soufiane to a term of five years in prison. The prosecution had requested a sentence of fourteen years in prison for voluntary manslaughter against the defendant.