Prosecutors at the Tangier Court of Appeal announced Thursday the arrest of two additional suspects in the sprawling Tangier ballot fraud case, bringing to seven the total number of people detained since investigators first opened the file. The case, which has gripped Morocco’s northern port city for weeks, keeps yielding fresh and troubling details.
According to the public prosecutor’s statement, one of the newly detained suspects works as an accountant for a private company. Acting on instructions from his employer — already in custody — he allegedly helped mark ballots with a political party’s symbol. The scheme is said to have unfolded inside a hotel room, where the employer was staying alongside two other men, already under arrest, who were carrying bags filled with the falsified ballots.
Investigators say the evidence trail is damning. Hotel surveillance footage, which the suspects reportedly tried to erase, was recovered by forensic technicians. The recordings show the second suspect together with the accountant and the two other detainees gathered in the same room. In a detail prosecutors called particularly incriminating, the very bags visible in that footage later turned up at polling stations on election day.
A forensic review of the second suspect’s phone also uncovered several calls placed to two other detainees both before and on election day itself — calls prosecutors say point to a coordinated operation rather than an isolated act.
In its statement, the public prosecutor’s office said it had requested that all those implicated be placed under pretrial detention and referred for judicial investigation, on charges of undermining the electoral process and participating in ballot fraud. Authorities reaffirmed their commitment to « the strict application of the law » and said they would continue monitoring the proceedings closely.
The case is one of several judicial files opened in Tangier in the aftermath of Morocco’s recent legislative elections, underscoring the authorities’ tightened scrutiny of attempts to manipulate the vote. The investigating judge is now expected to determine the full scope of the alleged network and whether additional individuals were involved.
