The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) announced the opening of an investigation, this Wednesday in a press release, for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” after the murder on Saturday of a French tourist in Tiznit in southern Morocco.
This 79-year-old French national was killed in a Tiznit market with a knife. She lived in a campsite near this small town. On Monday, the investigation was entrusted by the Moroccan prosecutor’s office to the anti-terrorist police, suspecting “a terrorist motive for the crime”, said a source close to the investigation on Monday. The Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ) “was in charge of the investigation in this case under the supervision of the king’s prosecutor at the Rabat Court of Appeal due to suspicions of a terrorist motive for the crime”, said said the source on condition of anonymity.
Paris recommends its nationals to be vigilant
A 31-year-old suspect was arrested the same day in Agadir, just a few kilometers from the crime scene. He is also suspected of having committed “an attempted murder” of a Belgian in Agadir, Moroccan police revealed on Saturday.
The Belgian national was stabbed and hospitalized in this tourist town. His days are not in danger. Following the murder of the septuagenarian, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs “recommended to be vigilant in all public places and when traveling in Morocco”, in a travel advice posted on the website of the French Embassy in Morocco.
Placed in a psychiatric hospital
“The investigating judge in charge of the case decided that [mercredi] evening to place the suspect in the Ar-Razi psychiatric hospital in Salé after consultation with the prosecution. He will be subjected there to medical expertise and the investigation is continuing,” said the Moroccan source. According to the police, the suspect, now under an anti-terrorism investigation, had previously been admitted to a psychiatric hospital “from September 25 to October 25, 2021”.
Morocco was the scene at the end of 2018 of an attack against two Scandinavian tourists, beheaded in the name of IS in the High Atlas mountains (South). At the end of a well-attended trial, the defendants were sentenced to the death penalty, not applied in Morocco since 1993. Since 2002, the Moroccan police have dismantled more than 2,000 terrorist cells and arrested more than 3,500 people in the framework of cases related to “terrorism”, according to data communicated in 2021 by the BCIJ.