MARRAKESH, Morocco, Dec 14, 2012 (AFP)
MARRAKESH, Morocco, Dec 14, 2012 (AFP)
A Moroccan court on Friday handed jail sentences to two former drivers of a French luxury hotel manager accused of paedophilia for “taking part in the exploitation of children.”
The court in Marrakesh sentenced the men to eight months in prison and fined them 5,000 dirhams (450 euros) each, ordering them to pay damages to the civil parties who filed the case.
The case relates to their former employer, Patrick Finet, who left Morocco last year, where he worked for the Mandarin Oriental hotel group, and whose lawyers say the case against him was dropped because of lack of evidence.
They have claimed he is the victim of a commercial dispute with the JK Hotel group, which insists that he is still subject to an arrest warrant in Morocco.
Najat Anwar, who heads the rights group “Hands off my Child”, and JK Hotel brought legal proceedings against Finet, saying “thousands of pornographic photos and pictures of children” were found on a computer he left in Morocco in September 2011.
The images were found after a complaint was lodged against Finet in the context of the commercial dispute between the hotel groups.
Anwat’s NGO, which has been present at every hearing of the case, has asked for an international arrest warrant to be issued for the Frenchman.
“We are going to reactivate our demand. In convicting the two drivers, the judiciary has recognised the facts. We want Patrick Finet to be face trial in Morocco or in France,” Anwat told AFP.
France was embroiled in an alleged paedophile scandal in Morocco last year, when a French former education minister claimed in a TV interview that another ex-cabinet minister had molested boys at a Moroccan orgy and that senior figures covered it up.
