A Moroccan judge ordered that a man suspected of fatally stabbing a French woman and injuring a Belgian citizen be evaluated for psychiatric issues, as authorities in three countries opened investigations into the suspect’s possible ties to terrorism.
According to the French interior ministry, a 78-year-old French woman was killed in a knife attack in a market in Tiznit, a town in southern Morocco on Saturday, January 15.
The suspect, a 31-year-old Moroccan man, was arrested and placed in custody later that day in the city of Agadir, about 100 kilometers north of Tiznit, police said.
The police reported that before he was apprehended, he used a knife to attack people in a cafe located on Agadir’s coastal strip, resulting in the injuries of a Belgian woman. An ambulance transported her to the hospital after she was stabbed multiple times.
Moroccan police said the suspect does not have any criminal record.
According to reports, he allegedly received treatment in the psychiatric ward of the Hassan I Hospital in Tiznit last year. An investigating judge in the capital, Rabat, ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the man. As a result, he was placed in the Razi mental facility in Salé, near Rabat from “September 25 to October 25, 2021.”
According to the public prosecutor, the case has been referred to the police’s anti-terror squad to investigate “possible terrorist motives.”
In Paris, the French anti-terror prosecutor announced on Wednesday, January 19, that an investigation was launched into a “murder in connection with a terrorist intent” after a French tourist was killed in southern Morocco.
Additionally, the Belgian Federal Public Prosecutor’s office announced on Thursday, January 20, that it will investigate whether the attempted murder of a Belgian tourist in Morocco has a terrorist connection.
Following the murder of the French woman, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised french tourists to be vigilant in all public places when traveling in Morocco, in a post on the website of the French Embassy in Morocco.
In 2018, an Islamic State-supported operation led to the beheading of two Scandinavian women in the Atlas Mountains near Marrakech. A court in Morocco sentenced the three men convicted of the attack to death in 2019.
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