Moroccan Man Presumed Dead for 9 Years Returns Home, Sparking Investigation

The justice system is trying to unravel an astonishing story. After the return home of the young man, Benaïssa, declared dead and buried, in the Gharb, a commune under the province of Sidi Kacem, nine years ago, the justice system opened an investigation three years later. The aim is to know the true identity of the person buried in his place. To this end, the Public Prosecutor’s Office ordered the exhumation of the remains for a series of anthropological tests, reports the daily Assabah.

Thus, the remains of the unknown young man were transported in plastic bags to the Forensic Medicine Center of the Kénitra Provincial Hospital.

According to the account of the facts, the young man was declared dead by drowning in a water canal in the region. His supposed body had then been entrusted to his family in a sealed coffin, accompanied by a certificate from the coroner bearing the reference 355/07, specifies the same source.

However, nine years later, Benaïssa returned home. To his family, he had suggested that he had been the victim of a kidnapping in 2007 by a local official in the Larache region. The latter had forced him to work on his farm, without any pay, for all those years.