Mounir Laymouri said he would be back on Monday. Police were waiting when he landed.
The Tangier mayor was detained at Ibn Battouta airport on Monday morning after arriving on a flight from Malaga and taken to the city’s police prefecture in execution of a national search notice issued in the investigation into suspected electoral irregularities at Al Qods school.
His arrest came less than 24 hours after he told Le360 from Spain that he had “nothing to do with this case” and rejected suggestions that his departure from Morocco amounted to flight.
“I did not flee Morocco,” Laymouri said on Sunday, describing his stay in Spain as a business trip and saying he was due to return to Tangier on Monday.
The PAM politician, who also headed his party’s election campaign in Tangier, had left for Spain on Thursday evening. Judicial police later went to his home seeking to question him and arrange a confrontation with one of the suspects already detained in the Al Qods case.
According to an authorized source, that suspect had named Laymouri during questioning. A national search notice followed after investigators learnt that the mayor had left the country.
Five suspects have so far been detained over what prosecutors say happened at two polling stations during the September 23 legislative vote, including two polling-station presidents and their two deputies.
The prosecution’s preliminary account centers on a batch of ballots removed from inside one polling station.
According to the prosecutor general at the Tangier Court of Appeal, a deputy polling-station president took the ballots with the help of the station president, concealed them in a bag and carried them out of the school.
Prosecutors say an attempt was then made, in coordination with the other suspects, to reintroduce the papers into two polling stations.
The seized ballots bore ink different from that used at the polling stations, the prosecution said. An investigating judge has been asked to open a judicial investigation into suspected interference with voting operations, falsification and participation in those alleged offences.
The judicial investigation is not the only scrutiny now trained on the Tangier vote. The Interior Ministry has dispatched a central inspection commission to Tangier to conduct administrative inquiries into the irregularities reported at the two polling stations and examine the circumstances surrounding them.
An earlier ministry mission spent around two hours at the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima wilaya going over the Al Qods case with regional officials. The caïd responsible for the administrative annex was questioned about the chain through which official election material was received from wilaya services and handed over to the voting center on polling day.
The ministry said administrative measures would follow according to the findings and the legal responsibilities established by the inspection.
PAM, meanwhile, has rejected accusations directed at the party over the Tangier incidents, describing them after polling day as a “malicious and fabricated campaign” and a “political plot.” It also backed the judicial investigation.
