HIBAPRESS – El Jadida
The Criminal Court of First Instance at the Court of Appeal in El Jadida recently sentenced a person in his twenties for attempting to deliberately set fire to a house owned by others, and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
The local judicial police in Azemmour, had arrested the accused after receiving a complaint from his grandmother, submitted to the duty service, in which she stated that the accused came to her house in an unnatural state, demanding a sum of one hundred dirhams. After she refused to give him the money, he threatened to set fire to the house with a butane gas cylinder and a lighter.
Given the seriousness of the threat, the officer in charge of the duty service, accompanied by his assistants, went to the scene of the incident, where they observed the accused threatening to set fire and holding the gas cylinder and lighter, repeating his phrase: "Give me 100 dirhams or I'll blow up this gas cylinder."
After two surveillance operations, the accused was arrested under the influence of hallucinogenic pills that were examined according to legal procedures, before being subjected to fingerprinting by the automated system and local archives, to reveal that he was the subject of two national search warrants, the first related to an order to conduct an absentee procedure, and the second related to drug trafficking.
After the accused regained consciousness, he admitted to taking two hallucinogenic pills from a promoter in the Al-Haouzia forest, before going to his grandmother's house demanding one hundred dirhams to buy more pills, adding that his grandmother's refusal to grant his request angered him, so he decided to take revenge on her by attempting to set fire to the house by removing the gas cylinder from the oven and opening it while holding the lighter.
The seriousness of the threat prompted the grandmother to leave the house quickly, heading to the duty service, where she informed the security authorities of the matter, so they immediately went to the scene and arrested him in a hysterical state due to the effect of the drug, trying to carry out his threat.
