Tangier mayor detained on return from Spain in widening election investigation

Tangier Mayor Mounir Limouri was detained Monday morning after returning from Spain as investigators widened a probe into suspected manipulation of ballot papers during Morocco’s September 23 parliamentary election.

Limouri arrived at Tangier Ibn Battouta Airport from Malaga after previously saying he would return voluntarily to answer investigators’ questions. Several Moroccan outlets reported that police detained him at the airport under a national search warrant and transferred him to the city’s judicial police.

Hespress had earlier reported his arrival and said he was expected to be referred to the Tangier judicial police in connection with the same warrant.

Limouri, who is also a provincial official with the Authenticity and Modernity Party, had denied fleeing Morocco after his departure for Spain became public. He said the trip was for business meetings and promised to return to Tangier and appear before the judiciary.

The investigation began after authorities found a man carrying a bag containing election materials linked to polling stations at Al Quds School in Tangier’s Casabarata neighborhood.

Prosecutors said five suspects were subsequently detained, including two polling-station presidents and their deputies. Preliminary findings allege that one deputy, assisted by a polling-station president, removed ballot papers from the station, placed them in a bag and later returned them to the relevant polling stations in coordination with others. Investigators also found that ink used on the seized ballots differed from that used inside the polling stations.

Four suspects have already been presented to prosecutors, while judicial proceedings continue over suspected offenses involving the integrity of the vote, forgery and complicity.

Limouri’s return now places him directly inside an investigation that has moved beyond the original polling-station incident to examine possible links involving political and local officials.