Belgian Cannabis Trafficking Family Linked to Violent Kidnapping in Morocco

In a video broadcast by RTL, but which had been widely shared a few years ago, a Moroccan national residing in Belgium is kidnapped and assaulted by several men in a Tangier parking lot, reports the Belgian news channel.

Powerless in the face of his attackers, the victim, a Moroccan, is forcibly taken away and tortured. The kidnappers threaten him with a weapon and a ransom will then be demanded from him.

"We are facing a kidnapping, assault and battery. In the hypothesis where this kidnapping would also involve the payment of a ransom, I think we are clearly in the case of hostage-taking," says Frank Discepoli, a criminal lawyer and Assistant in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure.

As early as 2014, the Moroccan press had widely reported this kidnapping. Justice will not be long in reacting. It has set out to track down members of an Anderlecht family, suspected of having committed this assault. The investigations are bearing fruit: a few members of the family in question have been arrested in Belgium for cannabis trafficking, with Morocco and Spain as their rear bases.

In the wake of this, one of the brothers of the family, incarcerated in Belgium, is the subject of extradition to Morocco for the facts of hostage-taking. "A non-Belgian person, arrested in Belgium, having committed acts in Morocco, may - at the request of the Moroccan authorities - be extradited to Morocco and tried in Morocco," says Henri Laquay, a lawyer at the Brussels bar. For his part, the victim of the kidnapping wishes the success of this extradition.