Moroccan Politician’s Son Gets 30-Year Sentence for Murder in Agadir

Mitigating circumstances for the son of the parliamentarian prosecuted for voluntary manslaughter and mutilation of the victim’s body. The Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Agadir sentenced him to 30 years in prison, reports the daily Al Akhbar. A reduced sentence for the defendant who had been sentenced to life imprisonment at first instance in October 2023. The amount of compensation set by the first instance judgment remains unchanged.

It all started with the discovery of a charred body on wasteland on the outskirts of the city of Agadir in November 2022. The judicial police of Agadir had opened an investigation. The Directorate General of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) had provided it with useful information that allowed it to identify the victim, the alleged murderer and to discover the motive for the murder.

The victim was a 20-year-old entrepreneur who was involved in the field of e-commerce. His family had claimed that he was in business with the son of a parliamentarian from the region, aged 27, who owed him more than 3 million dirhams. The latter is the last person the young entrepreneur spoke to on the phone and had an appointment with.

Based on the results of the autopsy and genetic analyzes, the investigators were able to discover that the alleged murderer and the victim had met for the last time in a rural area on the outskirts of Agadir. The son of the elected official brutally assaulted and strangled the entrepreneur with a rubber cable before putting the body in the trunk of his car. He arrives on wasteland, sprinkles the body with a flammable liquid and then burns it. The suspect will be arrested and then prosecuted for premeditated murder.

After his arrest, the defendant’s defense produced a medical certificate attesting that he was suffering from schizophrenia and requested his hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital. But the president of the court declared that he had a medical report attesting to the good physical and mental health of the accused.