Electoral fraud in Tangier: five suspects including two polling station presidents prosecuted
The Tangier prosecutor's office has indicted five suspects involved in electoral fraud on the day of voting on 23 September. Manipulated ballots and suspicious ink were at the heart of the case.
Tangier: the mechanism of electoral fraud reconstructed by the prosecutor
According to fr.le360.ma, the Prosecutor General of the King at the Tangier Court of Appeal detailed in a statement the sequence of an electoral fraud that occurred on 23 September, the day of voting. Judicial investigation had been opened following the arrest of an individual in possession of a bag containing electoral documents.
Preliminary investigations led to the arrest of five suspects, taken into custody: two polling station presidents, their two deputies, and a fifth person. Four of them were presented before the prosecutor; the fifth remained in custody at the time of publication of the statement.
A scheme in several stages
The suspect initially arrested with the bag held the position of vice-president of a polling station. With the complicity of the president of that same polling station, he removed a batch of ballots from inside the station, concealed them in the bag, and had them removed from the school housing the voting. He then attempted to reintroduce them into two other polling stations, in coordination with the other individuals involved.
Analysis of the seized ballots revealed a determining element: the ink used on these documents differed from that used in the official polling stations, strengthening suspicions of falsification.
Judicial investigation opened, preventive detention sought
On the basis of these elements, the prosecutor referred the investigating judge with a request to open judicial proceedings against the persons concerned, placed in preventive detention. The charges retained relate to interference with voting operations, falsification and participation in these acts.
The Tangier prosecutor's office specified that it intended to continue monitoring this file in order to present the necessary submissions, within the framework of strict application of the law — and this, regardless of the status or position of the persons liable to be involved.
Source: Google News MA — Crime (fr)