The arrest comes as Morocco reinforces security cooperation with a growing international base of partner countries.
Rabat – Police in the Moroccan coastal city of Essaouira have arrested a French national for links to an international drug trafficking network, a press release from Morocco’s General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) has indicated.
According to the statement, the suspect was the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by French authorities since 2017 for links with drug trafficking entities.
The same statement detailed that the suspect, aged 38, was illegally established in Morocco. The arrest comes as Morocco’s security services put in colossal efforts to reinforce its base of international cooperation.
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In addition to providing critical intelligence in a number of joint anti-terrorism operations with partner countries in the past years, Moroccan security services have been doubling their contributions in other security cooperation mechanism. Cooperation ranges from tracking individuals under international arrest warrants to the identification of networks of illegal psychotropic drugs traffickers.
DGSN noted that the French suspect was apprehended while riding an undocumented motorbike.
As they substantially dug into the reasons of his presence in Morocco, the police in Essaouira later discovered that the individual had links to an international drug trafficking and was subject of an international arrest warrant issued by French authoritarians.
Under the Franco-Moroccan bilateral security and legal cooperation, Morocco can extradite suspects to relevant French jurisdictions.
DGSN’s release concluded that the Moroccan authorities have informed their French counterparts of the arrest of the 38-year-old suspect, pending further investigations to establish the circumstances of the arrest and shed light into the person’s activities in Morocco.
