The investigating judge of the Court of Appeal yesterday evening ordered the incarceration of six members of the same family in the local prisons of Asilah and Tangier. The mother and her five children are accused of a grisly crime: the murder of the father, whose body was found literally inside a wall of their home.
According to corroborating sources, the accused appeared around 10:30 p.m. Sunday evening before the Tangier public prosecutor’s office, then before the investigating judge, after the end of the investigation carried out by the city’s judicial police following their arrest last Thursday. The six accused are being prosecuted for physical torture resulting in death, participation in and failure to denounce a crime and drug trafficking.
As previously reported by Le360, it all started with a routine investigation into drug trafficking. The eldest son, with a criminal record, already known to the police, had been arrested with his mother and brothers and sisters in possession of a large quantity of drugs. Over the course of the interrogations, which lasted nearly 7 hours, a simple but impactful question shook the case: “Where is your father?» The evasive, even contradictory answers from the suspects aroused the suspicions of the investigators.
Because it was not a simple case of disappearance. The truth is much darker. According to initial investigations, it all started with family tensions exacerbated by the criminal activities of the eldest son, involved in drug trafficking, and alleged witchcraft exercises by the mother.
Read also: Tangier: discovery of a corpse embedded in a wall, the family is behind the murder, the neighbors in shock
Exasperated by the actions of the two, the father had become a threat to them, then a target. One night, the situation degenerates: the mother and the eldest son violently attack the head of the family, in the presence of the rest of the small family. Her protests and cries of pain echo through the apartment, but no one comes to her aid.
Part of the mystery (finally) solved…
The body of the victim, who was tortured and brutally murdered, was transported by the eldest son, with the help of his mother, in a car, hidden among furniture to their apartment in Tanja Balia, where he was walled in cement. This is how the victim, a respected grocer appreciated by his neighbors, suddenly disappeared, leaving behind an apparently grieving family, whose explanations were however increasingly confused.
For six years, the family maintained a facade of normalcy. To curious neighbors, they told that the father had left the family home, tired of his son’s illicit activities. Sometimes, they even made up stories of crimes committed in his native village to justify his prolonged absence. The questions persisted, but the answers remained vague and insufficient to ward off suspicion. Everything changed when the family was arrested for drug possession. To be continued…
