Ballot papers were taken from inside a Tangier polling station, hidden in a bag and carried out of the school—only for an attempt to be made to bring them back into two polling stations, prosecutors said on Saturday as they laid out their findings in one of the most closely watched cases to emerge from Sept. 23’s election.
Five people have been detained in the investigation, including two polling-station presidents and their two deputies, the King’s public prosecutor at the Tangier Court of Appeal said in a statement.
Four were brought before prosecutors on Saturday. The fifth remained in police custody and is due to appear once that period ends.
The account given by prosecutors fills in some of the blanks left by the bag that set the case in motion on election day.
According to the preliminary investigation, the man caught carrying it was not an outsider to the voting operation. He was the deputy president of a polling station.
Prosecutors say he removed a batch of ballots from inside the station with the help of its president, concealed them in the bag and carried them out of the school where voting was taking place.
The ballots were then headed back in. Investigators say the deputy worked with the other suspects to reintroduce the papers into two polling stations.
The ink found on the seized ballots was different from that being used inside the polling stations, according to the prosecutor’s statement.
The findings have prompted prosecutors to seek a formal judicial investigation into suspected interference with voting operations, falsification and complicity.
They have asked that the suspects concerned be held in pre-trial detention while an investigating judge works through the case.
How it all began
The case began in the middle of voting on September 23, when footage circulated showing a man being apprehended with a bag containing election material at Al Qods school in Tangier’s Casabarata neighborhood.
At the time, prosecutors said little beyond confirming the arrest and opening an immediate investigation. By Saturday, the inquiry had reached inside the polling stations themselves.
An Interior Ministry commission was sent to the Tangier wilaya Saturday and spent around two hours going over the Al Qods case. The caïd responsible for the area was questioned about his part in the official chain through which election material passed from wilaya services to the polling center.
A separate strand of the investigation has also touched Tangier Mayor Mounir Laymouri. A national search notice was issued after one suspect named him during questioning, and investigators sought to confront him with that suspect. Authorities learnt that he had travelled to Spain on Thursday evening. Being named in an investigation does not establish involvement in the alleged offenses.
