A 79-year-old French woman was stabbed to death Saturday in Tiznit near Agadir, Morocco, in what may be a terrorist attack.
Update on what we know from the investigation.
What happened ?
On Saturday, a French national was fatally stabbed at a market in Tiznit.
Some local media refer to an assailant armed with an axe.
This 79-year-old woman, whose identity has not yet been revealed, lived in a campsite near this small town.
Another woman, a Belgian, was also stabbed that day in Agadir when the man attacked the customers of a café on a terrace.
But his days are not in danger.
Who is the victim ?
According to Var Matin, the victim is a resident of Var who spent part of the year in Morocco with her husband of twenty years.
Originally from Muy, north of Fréjus, this mother of three had joined friends in southern Morocco when she was killed.
Who is the aggressor?
A 31-year-old suspect was arrested hours later in Agadir, just a few kilometers from the crime scene.
He was quickly identified thanks to CCTV footage from the Tiznit market.
Already interned before and on antidepressants, according to Moroccan media, the man should be hospitalized again, ordered the examining magistrate in Rabat, after consultation with the king's attorney general.
He will undergo a psychiatric examination there.
According to Moroccan police, the suspect had stayed in a psychiatric hospital "from September 25 to October 25, 2021".
Who is conducting the investigation?
It is the Moroccan anti-terrorist police who are in charge of the investigation, the investigators suspecting "a terrorist motive for the crime".
The Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations (BCIJ), the "Moroccan FBI", "was in charge of the investigation in this case under the supervision of the king's prosecutor at the Rabat Court of Appeal due to suspicions about a terrorist motive for the crime,” it says.
For its part, the French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) in turn announced in a press release that it had opened an investigation into this case.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommends on its website to French people visiting the country "to be vigilant in all public places and when traveling in Morocco".
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The previous ones
At the end of 2018, Morocco was the scene of a terrorist attack against two Scandinavian tourists, beheaded in the name of the Islamic State in the High Atlas mountains.
The defendants were sentenced to the death penalty, which has not been applied in Morocco since 1993. Since 2002, the Moroccan police have dismantled more than 2,000 terrorist cells and arrested more than 3,500 people in connection with cases linked to “terrorism”.