Morocco Court Sentences Four to 17 Years for Attempted Land Theft in El Jadida

This new case of real estate dispossession has just come to a happy end. Thus, informs the daily Assabah, justice has just prevented four individuals, two men and two women, from dispossessing a victim of a 2,000 m² plot of land, located in a strategic corner of the capital of the Doukkala region, by convicting them.

It all started, explains the newspaper, when the owner of the land realizes an attempt to register her property, at the land registry, in the name of a foreigner. She files an opposition request and a lawsuit. But, continues the same source, the suspects have also, on their side, initiated legal action against the owner of the land, her son and the witnesses of an adoulaire deed.

After 25 hearings and regular recourse to the contumacy procedure, despite the slowdown caused by the health crisis, the trial has finally come to an end. Thus, following the investigations carried out at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the documents provided by the suspects proved to be false. Moreover, the indications on the document were those of a car sale deed that had been removed from the municipal registers. Not to mention that the gang had used the name of a fictitious company for the request to register the land with the land registry.

At the end of the trial, the Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance of El Jadida ordered that all the false documents used in the case be destroyed, and sentenced the two main suspects to five years’ imprisonment each. The first accomplice was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and the second, a civil servant, will spend four years behind bars.