She lived in a nearby campsite. A 79-year-old Frenchwoman, Christiane Fourret, was killed on a market in Tiznit, in the south of Morocco, using a bladed weapon, on Saturday January 15. A 31-year-old suspect was arrested the same day after another Belgian woman was attacked. and taken to a psychiatric hospital, but the terrorist motive is not ruled out. French justice announced Wednesday the opening of an investigation for “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.
1What do we know about the French victim?
This woman was from Muy, in the Var. As reported Var-Morning, for twenty years, she spent a good part of the year on the roads of Morocco in a motorhome with her husband. The couple were staying at a campsite in Tiznit with friends, learned France Télévisions from sources close to the investigation. She was attacked at the beginning of the afternoon in a city market with a butcher’s sheet.
2What information do we have about the injured Belgian woman?
The suspect also assaulted on the same day a Belgian national in Agadir, a hundred kilometers from Tiznit. Wounded with a knife, this 67-year-old woman was hospitalized in this tourist town, and her days are not in danger, according to the doctors, reports the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office in a press release. The latter specifies that this woman is from the region of Mons and lives in Morocco.
3Who is the suspect?
The man suspected of being the perpetrator of the attacks was arrested and identified on Saturday evening. The link between the two facts was established in particular on the basis of video surveillance in Tiznit. The man’s name is Ali Boujouham and is 31 years old, according to the Moroccan magazine The Observer. His criminal record is clean.
He says he is “possessed by the demon” and has been interned in the Ar-Razi psychiatric hospital in Salé since Tuesday, F learned.rance Televisions from sources close to the investigation. According to Moroccan police, the suspect had been in a psychiatric hospital from September 25 to October 25, 2021.
4Why is the terrorist track considered?
Despite this hospitalization for medical expertise, the Moroccan prosecutor’s office entrusted the investigation to the anti-terrorist police, suspecting “a terrorist motive for the crime”, given the profile of the victims. On Wednesday, the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) announced in turn that it had opened an investigation into this case. The French government has “recommended to be vigilant in all public places and when traveling in Morocco”, in a travel advice posted on the website of the French Embassy in Morocco.
On Thursday, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office also announced the opening ofa file for “attempted assassination in a terrorist context”.
Morocco has been spared in recent years from violence linked to jihadist groups. However, the kingdom was the scene at the end of 2018 of an attack against two Scandinavian tourists, beheaded in the name of the Islamic State (IS) organization in the High Atlas mountains, in the south of the country.