Two Moroccan public figures have been sentenced to at least a decade in prison over a major drug trafficking scheme linked to a convicted Malian kingpin.
The case implicates more than 20 people accused of playing a role in a pervasive international drug network run by Ahmed Ben Brahim, dubbed the “Escobar of the Sahara”.
Said Naciri and Abdennabi Bioui, both former senior officials of Morocco’s Authenticity and Modernity Party, part of the governing coalition, were charged with corruption, forgery and the “possession, sale and export of drugs”.
A Moroccan court on Thursday sentenced Naciri, who was also the former head of Wydad Casablanca football club, to jail for a decade, while Bioui got 12 years.
It was unclear exactly which charges the pair were found guilty of, and lawyers from their team said Friday they still did not know which accusations were upheld because they had not obtained the text of the verdict.
The trial, which began in 2024, is the first in Morocco involving high-profile political figures in a drug trafficking case. Both had been in custody since late 2023 and deny the allegations.
At the Casablanca Court of Appeal, sentences against the other defendants were almost inaudible, as sobs and cries from relatives who had turned out in large numbers filled the courtroom, an AFP journalist saw.
Malian trafficker Ben Brahim, who has been serving a 10-year sentence in Morocco since 2019, had initiated the proceedings against Naciri and Bioui but did not take the stand during the trial, which lasted more than two years.
He accused the pair of helping him smuggle drugs from Morocco to North Africa and the Sahel, and claimed they seized a villa from him in an upscale Casablanca neighbourhood.
During the hearings, the two were also questioned about several million euros they had amassed in recent years, but both said their assets came from legal activities.
In closing arguments, their defence team stressed the absence of material evidence implicating them, arguing that the prosecution had relied mainly on statements from the convicted Malian trafficker, local media reported.
