Drug Lord ’Turbo’ Trial Postponed Again in Morocco Due to Health Issues

Responding favorably to the request of "Turbo’s" defense, the criminal chamber of the Casablanca Court of Appeal decided to postpone the eleventh hearing. According to the defense, Reda Abakrim is suffering from a malaise and cannot appear in court or follow the trial. A medical certificate was presented to the court.

Arrested on December 22, 2020 at Casablanca airport on his way from Dubai after 13 years on the run, and then prosecuted in Morocco for "participation in a kidnapping, sequestration and voluntary homicide" in the case of the murder of Brahim Hajaji in France in 2007, "Turbo" had been acquitted on April 18, 2023 by the criminal chamber of the Casablanca Court of Appeal to the surprise of the lawyer of the victim’s family. The latter had appealed. "He was first arrested for using a false passport before the police discovered that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant after a 21-year prison sentence in France in a drug-related murder case," Mohamed Aghnaj had specified.

Since the 2007 murder in a housing project in Poissy (Yvelines, Paris region) of Brahim Hajjaji, for which he is suspected, Reda Abakrim had been on the run. In June 2020, the Versailles Assize Court, near Paris, had sentenced this man, actively sought by the French Office for the Fight against Drug Trafficking (Ofast) as the main suspect in Hajaji’s murder, to 21 years in prison. Mohamed Aghnaj had meanwhile stated that Brahim’s family is demanding the application of the 21-year prison sentence handed down against him by the French justice system.

"Turbo" would be involved in the murder of the husband of Moroccan singer Rym Fikri. The latter had been kidnapped on February 8 near his home in Casablanca by individuals who were on board an off-road vehicle. He will be murdered and his body will be found in the bed of a river near Rabat.