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Rabat – A Moroccan teenager faced the children’s judge in the court of Creteil on Friday, December 20, for an attempt to steal an airplane. This summer, police at France’s Paris-Orly Airport arrested the 16-year-old, who had taken LSD, a hallucinogenic drug, before attempting to steal the plane.
The 16-year-old is an irregular migrant from Morocco who arrived in France two years ago, according to aviation news outlet Airlive.
The teen had been homeless for months leading up to his crime.
The flight was reportedly headed for Morocco, and sources claim that the teenager simply wanted to return to his home country.
Airlive reported that Vueling Airlines employees discovered the Moroccan teenager in the cockpit of an Airbus A321. A maintenance technician reported that the boy had been tampering with the aircraft’s controls.
The Moroccan teenager reportedly resisted arrest, likely an effect of the LSD.
Paris-Orly Airport employees do not know how he managed to get on the plane or access the cockpit without authorization.
“His idea was to fly, not to fly himself,” his lawyer Marie Dieudonne de Carfort claimed. “He’s suspected of an impossible theft.”
She added that one cannot steal an aircraft without any knowledge of how it operates.
“It’s a bit like trying to steal a house,” she said.
The arrest occurred in June 2019. French daily Le Parisien reported that the detainee’s mental state has been on the decline since his arrest.
“He stays naked in his cell” and uses only a blanket to cover himself, Le Parisien quotes the teen’s lawyer as saying.
“[He] goes to the toilet on the floor and paints the walls of the cell with his own feces.”
During the trial on Friday, De Carfot maintained that her client faces danger in prison due to his mental health.
Read also: Djinns, Shame, and Taboos: Opening Up About Mental Health in Morocco
