Arab News | Morocco detains Tangier mayor over alleged vote fraud

RABAT: Moroccan authorities on Monday placed the mayor of Tangier in police custody over suspected electoral fraud in the recent parliamentary elections, a judicial source told AFP.

Five other people, including two officials who were overseeing polling stations in Tangier, were “being held in pre-trial detention,” also over electoral fraud accusations, the source who spoke on condition of anonymity said.

Mayor Mounir Limouri “was placed in police custody by order of the public prosecutor’s office as part of the investigation into suspected electoral fraud,” the source added.

Morocco’s ruling coalition dominated the parliamentary election last week, but the poll was marked by the lowest turnout in two decades and reports of ballot fraud in Tangier.

The interior ministry said that a sweeping investigation into the reports was ongoing.

Media reports said Limouri was detained upon arrival at Tangier airport from Spain, following a warrant issued against him for the alleged tampering of ballots in his constituency.

One polling station official in the northern city was arrested the day of the vote, after he was allegedly found with documents meant for ballot tampering, according to media reports.

Limouri, a member of the center-right Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) which won the election, told news website Le360 over the weekend that he “had no connection” with the incident.

The PAM won 97 out of 395 seats in the House of Representatives, while the National Rally of Independents (RNI), which heads the outgoing coalition, came in second with 66 seats.

Morocco is set to appoint its next prime minister from the PAM, with Fouzi Lekjaa — who serves as budget minister and is better known as chief of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation — likely to be tapped as premier.

But Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, the PAM’s national coordinator who serves as the current territorial planning minister and mayor of Marrakech, could also be in line to become Morocco’s first woman prime minister.