The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) announced on Wednesday the opening of an investigation for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise” after the murder on Saturday of a French tourist in Tiznit in southern Morocco.
This 79-year-old French national was killed in a market with a knife. She lived in a campsite near this small town.
The suspect involved in another case
A 31-year-old suspect was arrested the same day in Agadir, just a few kilometers from the crime scene. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital on Wednesday for a medical report.
The man is also suspected of having attempted to murder a Belgian in Agadir, according to Moroccan police. Wounded with a stab, she was hospitalized in this tourist town, and her life was not in danger.
The government calls for “vigilance”
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 against two Scandinavian tourists, beheaded in the name of the Islamic State (IS) organization in the High Atlas mountains (south).
3500
Since 2002, the 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 communicated in 2021 by the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations.