DNA Link Emerges in Unsolved Murder of French Restaurateur in Morocco

Four years later, the murder of the former owner of the Kechmara, Pascal Foltran, has still not been solved. Back from a third stay in Morocco, where they met the investigating judge in charge of the case, his father Jacques Foltran, 82, and his brother Arnaud, 48, express their disappointment. The Moroccan justice system has informed them that the suspect’s DNA was also found in the kidnapping and rape of a French retiree. "We have just learned that the suspect’s DNA found in Pascal’s villa matches that of Maryse (we will call her that) who had been trussed up and raped at her home in Marrakech in October 2017, three months before my brother was attacked," Arnaud testifies to La Dépêche du Midi alongside his father in Montauban in the office of his lawyers Jean-Lou Lévi and Majda Loukili of the Meknès bar.

Despite these new revelations, the case is stagnating. This is enough to annoy the victim’s parents. "For them, the motive for the crime remains the hypothesis of a drug-addicted homeless person who came to steal from Pascal in the middle of the night," fumes Jacques Foltran angrily. "The homeless person sniffing glue on the street who doesn’t steal anything, and who was able to strike Pascal with such force: this is not logical," marvels Majda Loukili. Arnaud Foltran, for his part, denounces a "judicial obstruction". "This judicial obstruction is driving our family crazy, they are hiding something, it suits them. We don’t understand why?" storms the former restaurateur. And he supports his argument by the fact that the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP) "has never received any response from the Moroccan authorities to their proposal for international cooperation to solve this murder."