Marrakech Shooting Linked to International Money Laundering, Drug Trafficking- Police says

The shooting that took place on Thursday night at a cafe in Morocco’s tourist city of Marrakesh leaving one dead and three injured was linked to international money laundering and international drug trafficking, said the Moroccan police in a statement.

The Moroccan police said that six suspects in this crime were arrested in Casablanca and that investigations led to the seizure of the motorcycle and the firearm used by the criminals involved in the shooting.

The police also said that the instigator who commissioned the attack was identified and investigations are ongoing to determine his whereabouts. He is already wanted by justice on charges of money laundering, international drug trafficking and blackmailing.

The attackers stormed into La Crème café in Marrakech and shot dead an individual, who was found out to be a medical student, son of the general prosecutor of an appeals court in Beni Mellal. Three other individuals, including a young woman and a waiter, were injured by the assailants who fled on their motorcycle.

According to reliable sources quoted by the news portal le360, the student was not the target. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The person targeted by the perpetrators was reportedly the owner of the café, who was sitting in a nearby table.

The murder was reportedly commissioned by a Moroccan living in the Netherlands, because of a dispute with the owner of the café, who also has connections with the Netherlands, the portal says.

The murder was therefore a settlement of accounts on the background of drug trafficking and money laundering.

Investigators have dismissed the terrorist track shortly after the shooting and Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit confirmed in a statement to le360 that the crime was a settlement of accounts.