The Marrakech Court of Appeal sentenced to death the two Dutch nationals involved in the shooting at La Crème café in Marrakech.

Rabat – On July 26, the Court of Appeal in Marrakech sentenced to death the main suspect Gabriel Edwin, from the Republic of Suriname, and his Dominican accomplice. Both defendants have Dutch nationality.

The case goes back to November 2017 when the two defendants, on a large motorcycle, opened fire at café “La Crème.” The shooting caused the death of a young medical student and seriously injured his female classmate.

The two Dutch defendants faced several charges. They were convicted of intentional premeditated homicide, participation in an attempted homicide, criminal gang formation, damage to public property, as well as drug production and trafficking.

The owner of the café and his cousin were sentenced, respectively, to 15 and 8 years in prison. Both were convicted of involvement in drug trafficking operations which led to the shooting.

Two further suspects were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, and a third was handed a suspended sentence of 2 to 3 months.

Judicial Police in Marrakech, in coordination with the services of the Directorate-General for the Surveillance of National Territory (DGST), carried out an investigation into the shooting. The investigation led to the arrest of the two Dutch nationals in August 2018.

DGSN reported that the defendants already had criminal records. They were directly linked to cases of international drug trafficking, abduction, taking hostages, armed robbery, and attempted murder.

Moroccan police linked the crime to the settling of accounts between drug cartels and drug traffickers working between Morocco and the Netherlands.

In recent weeks, Sale’s Court of Appeal had announced similar verdicts in the Imlil murder case in which two Scandinavian female tourists were killed by extremist terrorists in December 2018.

The three main defendants were also sentenced to death. However, the death penalty has not been carried out in Morocco since 1993.