Morocco Arrests Hotel Owner After Relaxing Marriage Certificate Rules for Guests

This week, the police contacted hotel owners and informed them that it is no longer permitted to require marriage contracts from couples when booking rooms, and that an unmarried woman residing in the same city can rent a room. The cancellation of this requirement, which follows a series of interventions by the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, on this discriminatory practice in Parliament, has its consequences.

The prosecutor of the king near the court of first instance of Sidi Slimane ordered the preventive detention of a hotel owner in the city for not having registered a client of the establishment "in the register dedicated to this effect and for having harbored a brothel", reports the daily Assabah. Motivated by the interventions of the Minister of Justice on the presentation of a marriage certificate in hotels, she would have transformed the establishment she manages - by proxy of the heirs - into a large brothel.

The same jurisdiction is prosecuting two other young individuals, a man and a woman, on provisional release for debauchery. They acknowledge having rented a room in the hotel for extramarital sexual relations. The first hearing will take place on Monday, June 3.