Moroccan security services struck a significant blow against drug trafficking networks overnight, intercepting a shipment of more than four tons of chira, a cannabis-derived resin, on the outskirts of Fez.
Officers from the city’s regional judicial police brigade, working alongside the General Directorate for National Territorial Surveillance (DGST), moved in the early hours of Saturday on a farm belonging to the operation’s alleged ringleader. There, investigators found a truck loaded with roughly 4.1 tons of the drug, a haul large enough to supply black markets for weeks. But what caught detectives’ attention just as much was a second discovery on the same property: four outboard motors and four inflatable boats, equipment with no obvious agricultural use and every hallmark of a maritime smuggling operation.
The farm’s owner, a woman identified by investigators as the ring’s principal suspect, was arrested on site. Two further suspects were detained shortly afterward as the inquiry widened, bringing the total number in custody to three. A routine check against national security databases turned up an additional twist: one of the detainees was already the subject of an outstanding nationwide search warrant, tied to a separate case involving narcotics and psychotropic substances.
All three remain in custody, questioned under the oversight of the public prosecutor’s office, which is now working to establish the full scope of the network, including any wider domestic or international connections. No formal charges had been announced as the investigation continued.
The seizure fits a broader pattern of coordinated action between Morocco’s national police and the DGST against trafficking rings operating in the country’s north, a region long exploited by smugglers because of its proximity to the Spanish coast. The presence of marine equipment at an inland farm, far from any beach, points to the layered logistics such networks rely on, stockpiling product at inconspicuous rural sites before moving it toward the water for the final leg of the journey. Morocco remains one of the world’s largest sources of cannabis resin, and its authorities regularly cite large-scale seizures like this one as evidence that cross-agency intelligence sharing is disrupting trafficking routes before shipments reach international buyers.
