When Algeria slows down the repatriation of Moroccans found dead on its coasts

She’s waiting for her son’s body and it’s exhausting her. Facing the camera, this pious woman, in tears, spoke to implore her “Algerian brothers” to return to him the remains of his boy, who died at sea this summer, in the north of Morocco. Carried away by the waters, his body was found more than 400 km to the east, near Oran, Algeria. More than four months after its discovery, it is still kept in a city morgue.

Broadcast on 1^is December by online media Tanjaouithe filmed pleas of the footballer’s mother Abdellatif Akhrif, 24, moved Moroccan Internet users and raised questions about the repatriation of his remains. Why have the Algerian authorities still not returned him to his family?

The left winger of the first division club Ittihad Riadhi of Tangier disappeared on July 6 during a yacht trip departing from the seaside resort of M’diq. He was swimming in the Mediterranean, with four relatives, including two teammates, when the group was surprised by a storm.

Three people’s lives were saved thanks to the intervention of the Moroccan navy. Not Abdellatif Akhrif, nor a second player, Salman Harraq, who remains nowhere to be found. On August 8, a body, believed to be that of the footballer, was finally recovered near Cape Falcon, Algeria. A video taken by a jet skier shows him in shorts, shirtless, floating on the surface of the water.

“It was really omerta”

The slowness of his identification raises questions. According to various international organizations consulted, the conclusions in this type of procedure are usually known after a few days, or several weeks at most. But three months passed between the DNA sampling of Abdellatif Akhrif’s parents, carried out on August 14, then sent to Algeria, and the confirmation to the Moroccan authorities, on November 28, that the body is indeed that of their son .

“An abnormally long delay”confides a source close to the matter, who attributes this delay to “relations between the two countries”. Since August 24, 2021, Algiers has severed all official diplomatic ties with Rabat. Contacted by The Worldthe Algerian consul in Casablanca did not wish to answer our questions.

The footballer’s case is reminiscent of that of Abdelali Mchiouer. This Moroccan national, who resided in the Paris region, was killed on August 29, 2023 by gunfire attributed to the Algerian coast guard. He was then sailing on a jet ski with three friends off the coast of Saïdia, a border town in the north-east of Morocco. His body rested for nearly four months in a morgue in Tlemcen, before the Algerian justice system ordered its return to his family on December 21.

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