Moroccan Domestic Worker Seeks Justice After False Theft Accusation in Ceuta

Accused of having stolen from her employer jewelry (brooches, watches and pendants) valued at nearly 60,000 euros, the Moroccan woman was arrested in 2018 by the national police, detained and then acquitted in 2019, for lack of evidence, reports El Faro de Ceuta. For a year, she was deprived of her freedom and treated as a thief, not knowing which door to knock on to obtain justice.

The prosecution had requested two years in prison and a fine equivalent to the value of the stolen objects against her. But the court did not accede to this request, raising the lack of evidence (no witnesses, no fingerprints) and an accusation based on "suspicions and assumptions" and full of "contradictions, absurdities and inconsistencies".

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For her part, the young Moroccan has always proclaimed her innocence. She maintained throughout the trial that she was unaware of the existence of a safe in the house and that she was wrongly accused, after denouncing her employer who had benefited from her services without signing her an employment contract. After her acquittal, she denounced her employer for filing a false complaint against her to harm her image.

Three years later, the provincial court rules. In an order issued in February 2022, the judge dismissed this complaint, considering that it was impossible to prove the "falsity" of the complaint filed by the employer against the Moroccan. However, the Directorate of Labor and Social Security had already sanctioned the employer in March 2020 for lack of a contract, asking him to pay a fine of 20,000 euros for having employed the Moroccan without a contract and without declaring her to social security.