Moroccan Drug Trafficking Trial: 37 Gendarmes and Kingpin Face Court in Casablanca

On Friday, the Casablanca Court of Appeal decided to postpone the case of the gendarmes involved in the drug trafficker’s file to June 20. This postponement is justified by the absence of the accused on provisional release, which prevented the preparation of the case.

The Financial Crimes Chamber of the Casablanca Court of Appeal had previously imposed firm prison sentences totaling 72 years on the accused (members of the Royal Gendarmerie, informants, and intermediaries) in the case of the Beni Mellal drug lord. The main accused, Mohamed. S., detained in the local Oukacha prison, who flooded the Khenifra-Beni Mellal region with drugs, had been sentenced to six years in prison.

Ammar. H., Hicham. K. and Abdelaziz. H. were each sentenced to five years in prison. Hicham. A. was sentenced to three years in prison. The same chamber distributed a ten-year prison sentence to five gendarmes, in equal parts. It also sentenced twenty other gendarmes to twenty months in prison. Five other gendarmes were prosecuted for the time already served since their arrest.

The gendarmes were arrested after their complicity with a drug trafficker active in Beni Mellal was established. They are accused of turning a blind eye to the illegal activities of the criminal who is the subject of dozens of national arrest warrants. He was finally apprehended on the instruction of the King’s Attorney General.