Naciri, who headed Casablanca club Wydad AC, is among those detained in the case known as the “Escobar of the Sahara” affair [Sebastian Frej/MB Media via Getty]
A Moroccan court questioned suspects on Friday in a major drug trafficking case that has implicated prominent figures including the former head of Morocco’s most successful football club, an AFP journalist reported.
Since 2023, 20 people – among them political figures Abdenbi Bioui and Said Naciri, who also headed Casablanca club Wydad AC – have been detained in the case known as the “Escobar of the Sahara” affair.
The case has sent shockwaves through the North African country, implicating a total of 25 people on charges including “possession, marketing and export of drugs,” as well as corruption, according to prosecutors.
The trial has been adjourned several times since it opened in May 2024. Bioui and Naciri have yet to appear before a judge, and the trial is set to resume on February 21.
Five defendants were heard by a Casablanca Criminal Court judge on drug trafficking charges after statements they made during police investigations and prosecution questioning when the case was opened in 2023.
They were further questioned on recorded phone calls that same year which linked them to an organised network smuggling cannabis from Morocco to Algeria and beyond, prosecutors charged.
The recordings also tied them to Bioui, the prosecutors alleged.
Bioui is a businessman who formerly served as leader of the eastern regional council on behalf of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which is part of the ruling coalition in Rabat.
The five defendants in court denied all the charges against them. They said they were farmers and livestock herders and had no ties to drug trafficking, an AFP journalist reported.
One of them, identified as Abdellah Hannafi, acknowledged having had a telephone conversation with another suspect whom he did not name and who invited him to take part in drug trafficking, but he said he turned down the offer.
Prosecutors have alleged links between the suspects and Hadj Ahmed Ben Brahim, a Malian serving a 10-year prison sentence in Morocco for international drug trafficking.
Dubbed the “Pablo Escobar of the Sahara,” Ben Brahim was arrested in Casablanca in 2019 after the seizure of a record 40 tonnes of cannabis resin in 2015 in trucks that he owned.
The mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco has long been a major source of illicit cannabis resin, or hashish, smuggled to Europe.
In 2021, the North African country passed a law allowing the cultivation of medical and industrial-use cannabis in parts of the region.
