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French justice announced on Wednesday the opening of an investigation for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” following the murder on Saturday of a French tourist in southern Morocco. The suspect, a 31-year-old man also accused Thursday of “attempted assassination” on a Belgian national, was arrested the same day.
French justice announced, Wednesday, January 20, the opening of an investigation for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” following the murder, Saturday, January 15, of a French tourist in the south of Morocco. The suspect was arrested the same day in Agadir.
This 79-year-old French national was killed in a Tiznit market with a knife. She lived in a campsite near this small town.
Thursday, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office announced for its part that it had opened an investigation for “attempted assassination in a terrorist context” following the attack on a Belgian national on Saturday in Agadir. Wounded with a knife, she was hospitalized in this tourist town and her life is not in danger.
Both cases were attributed by the Moroccan police to the same suspect, a 31-year-old man arrested the same day in Agadir.
A terrorist motive?
In Morocco, a source close to the investigation told AFP on Wednesday that he had been taken to a psychiatric hospital for medical expertise. Monday evening, this source, who requested anonymity, indicated that the Moroccan prosecutor’s office had entrusted the investigation to the anti-terrorist police, suspecting “a terrorist motive for the crime”.
“The investigating judge in charge of the case decided on Wednesday evening to place the suspect in the Ar-Razi psychiatric hospital in Salé following consultation with the prosecution. He will be subjected there to medical expertise and the investigation is continuing,” said specified the Moroccan source. According to Moroccan police, the suspect had stayed in a psychiatric hospital “from September 25 to October 25, 2021”.
Following the murder of the septuagenarian on Saturday, the French government “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.
The kingdom has been spared in recent years from violence linked to jihadist groups. However, Morocco was the scene at the end of 2018 of an attack once morest two Scandinavian tourists, beheaded in the name of the Islamic State (IS) organization in the High Atlas mountains (south). After a well-attended trial, the defendants were sentenced to the death penalty, not applied in Morocco since 1993.
Since 2002, Moroccan police have dismantled more than 2,000 terrorist cells and arrested more than 3,500 people in cases related to “terrorism”, according to data released in 2021 by the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations.
With AFP
