No one in this family from the Had Dra region in Essaouira province thought that this young mother would be brutally murdered by her brother-in-law for refusing to sleep with him!
When elements of the Royal Gendarmerie were alerted in the rural Had Dra commune in the province of Essaouira that a young woman aged 26, married with one child, had died following a fall from a ladder, they lost no time in rushing to the scene. It was the deceased’s family who alerted them, even though the victim was staying with her in-laws. On arrival, the investigators stood in the hallway of the home to find the corpse lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the ladder. Investigators also noticed a serious wound to the left eye.
The body was evacuated to the morgue at the Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah provincial hospital in Essaouira. Pending the autopsy report to be drawn up by the forensic pathologist who examined the young woman’s corpse, the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Safi Court of Appeal has given instructions to bury her.
In the meantime, the mother of the deceased went to the investigators to reveal a secret: a few days ago, her daughter confided in her that she had been repeatedly harassed by her brother-in-law. In short, he had encouraged her to share a bed with him. It was he who informed them of his daughter’s supposedly accidental death in the first place, she confirmed to the investigators. Why didn’t he inform his brother or one of his relatives first, and not the deceased’s family? Why did he return home early? Where was he when his daughter-in-law fell from the ladder? These are just some of the questions the investigators asked him when he was summoned to answer the accusations made by the deceased’s mother. He was serene.
In short, they let her go. Only, the next day, he went back to the investigators to express his astonishment that she had injured her eye when she fell from the ladder. The hypothesis of a fall from the ladder didn’t convince him,” he told the detectives, who were listening attentively. So what had bitten him to go back to the gendarmes and express his doubts? This time, he put the bug in their ear and they decided to question him again, trying to find out whether he had tried to intervene to save her, and what he was wearing when he did so. His answer was clear: he found her lifeless. As for the clothing, he said he was wearing a blue shirt, which he later changed.
Where is that shirt? That’s what they were looking for when they took him home. Trying to convince them that he couldn’t remember where he’d put it, he finally extracted it from a pillow. The investigators noticed that it was stained with saltpetre. What’s more, his brother revealed to the detectives that there is indeed a shotgun in the family home. What’s more, the autopsy report concluded that death had been caused by a bullet from a firearm. And the brother-in-law had no choice but to spill the beans. He confessed that she was in the company of her infant son when he entered her room to incite her to debauchery. But she refrained and threatened to reveal the secret to her husband. Fearing a family scandal, he decided to kill her by shooting her from a shotgun. Falling to the ground, she was also hit in the eye. It was at this point that he brought the ladder to disguise his crime as an accidental death.
Brought before the criminal chamber of the Safi Court of Appeal, the three magistrates who examined the case found him guilty after deliberation, and sentenced him to 25 years’ imprisonment.
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