Morocco, known until now as the country of origin of a significant part of the hashish sold in the world, is taking another step. The kingdom has been shaken for several weeks by a scandalous affair of international trafficking of hard drugs. Heads have rolled and more could follow.
Twenty people in total, including well-known public figures, are already behind bars in connection with this affair which broke out when the “Pablo Escobar of the Sahara”, as he is nicknamed in Morocco and Mali, decided for a few months, to sit down at the table.
Hadj Ahmed Ben Ibrahim, a 47-year-old Moroccan-Malian, has been incarcerated in Morocco for 4 years for international cocaine trafficking. He was arrested at Casablanca airport in 2019 upon his arrival from Mauritania where he had just served several years in prison for the same reason.
According to Moroccan and foreign media, including Jeune Afrique, the man also nicknamed the “Malian” mulled over his revenge for a long time in his cell before deciding to take with him those who were his accomplices and associates and whom he esteems that they betrayed him. And these are no ordinary names.
Among the twenty people arrested and placed under arrest warrant, there are police officers, gendarmes, businessmen, real estate developers, a notary, and the president of a major Moroccan football club. This is Saïd Neciri, president of Wydad Casablanca, the most successful club in Morocco.
The other major personality who fell is the real estate magnate Abdenbi Bioui. The two men are leaders of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), a political group that sits in the government of Aziz Akhannouch. The quality of these two suspects gave the case another dimension and significant media coverage beyond Morocco.
Morocco: a drug trafficker brings down political figures
According to information leaked from the investigation, these accomplices of the drug trafficker took advantage of his fall to monopolize his property. We are talking, for example, of a villa in Casablanca taken over by Neciri and an apartment taken over by Bioui in the same city. Not to mention the millions of euros they owed him.
Because the “Pablo Escobar of the Sahara” was not a small-time drug trafficker. He was a baron of hard drugs which they transported from Latin America to West Africa and which he brought up to Europe along the Moroccan coast, thanks to a network with international ramifications and big complicity in Moroccan institutions.
When Mauritanian gendarmes arrested him in 2015 after a chase in the desert, there were three tons of cocaine in his vehicle. The comparison with the real Pablo Escobar is not exaggerated.
Like all drug traffickers of his stature, the “Malian” also has his legend. According to Jeune Afrique, he was born in Mali in 1976 to a Malian father and a Moroccan mother.
His career began after a fortunate (or unfortunate) encounter in the desert when he was still a poor camel breeder. He is said to have helped a Frenchman lost in the desert who thanked him by giving him a car.
The honest shepherd allegedly sold the car and sent the money to its owner. Seeing in him a man of confidence, the Frenchman introduced him to a circuit of importing cars from Europe.
Taking advantage of the instability in the Sahelian strip and his perfect knowledge of the desert, Hadj Brahim began drug trafficking and built up his network with international ramifications.
First Moroccan cannabis, then cocaine from Latin America. These activities allowed him to amass immense wealth, lead a luxurious lifestyle, and frequent the “respectable” notables of Morocco and other countries, as far as Latin America where he married the daughter of a general. Bolivian.
In Morocco, public opinion is obviously passionate about this story but does not lose sight of the involvement of big people in this affair. A case which reveals the extent to which Moroccan institutions are corrupted by drug trafficking. Before it was hashish, now it’s hard drugs.
