“Wanted since his escape from a Spanish prison eight years ago”, the drug lord “had managed to enter and leave the Kingdom no less than sixteen times, without being noticed”, relays Assabahspecifying that the fugitive managed to cross Moroccan border posts without being worried. According to investigators, this implies that the criminal held a “false passport which allowed him to keep his real identity secret”. But they were unable to confirm this hypothesis, the suspect having refused “to disclose the conditions thanks to which he was able to travel in complete peace of mind”.
The drug lord “also refused to hand over to investigators people who assisted him in his travels, whether in Morocco or in the European countries in which he traveled during these eight years on the run”, or if he had “used Moroccan boats to transport drugs with him to different destinations”, reports the daily, adding that “this drug lord was arrested by the gendarmerie services in Kenitra, while he was considered to be the ‘one of the most dangerous wanted traffickers’. He was placed in detention on the order of the investigating judge at the Kénitra court of first instance.
Read: Morocco: spectacular fall of a drug lord on the run since 2016
The trafficker is accused of international drug trafficking from Morocco and is also said to be involved in cases of theft and robbery. “After his escape from a Spanish prison, he initially returned to Italy, before taking advantage of his extradition operation to return to Morocco and disappear from the radar,” informs the publication which specifies that “at “Given the dangerousness of the individual, the gendarmerie services formed a team among its best elements to organize the operation of his arrest, which took place in a village in the commune of Ben Mansour.”
“His network was infiltrated by two agents who posed as elements of the Royal Armed Forces in charge of monitoring the maritime borders, and offered him their help to facilitate drug trafficking operations… A meeting was organized in order to make him fall into the net of the gendarmerie. The operation was not easy, since the baron and his accomplices showed violence and strong resistance, but he was still able to be arrested and subjected to a careful investigation, which did not certainly not yet revealed all its secrets,” details the daily.
Morocco
