Marrakech Court Officials Jailed for Stealing 260 Seized Smartphones

More than two years after the facts, the case of the theft of smartphones at the Benguerir court has finally been tried. The defendants were also ordered to pay the sum of 150,000 dirhams in damages to the civil party, reports the daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia. The court also decided to reclassify the facts for which two of the civil servants were prosecuted. Cleared of the initial charges, the latter were nevertheless convicted of misappropriation of public property. The first of the two civil servants was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 20,000 dirhams. As for the second, he received a one-year prison sentence and a fine of 40,000 dirhams.

The court also declared itself incompetent to rule on the case of a third defendant. The case dates back to October 2018, when a student went to the Benguerir Court of First Instance, armed with a court decision to recover his smartphone, a device seized two years earlier as part of a legal case. Insisting on recovering his property, the civil servant he addressed offered to buy him a new smartphone of the same model, after explaining to him that his had disappeared.

But the young man refused, stating that he did not really care about the phone, which cost around 10,000 dirhams, but the most important thing for him was its content, his contacts. Not knowing what to do, the civil servant passed the file on to his hierarchical superior, who in turn seized the court clerk, informing him in writing of the disappearance, under mysterious conditions, of 260 smartphones seized as part of judicial investigations and entrusted to his service.

Step by step, the judicial police of Marrakech managed to trace the trail of several missing phones, with the new owners claiming to have bought them from people working at the court.