Criminology and Psychology

Moroccan police have seized 1.1 tons of cannabis resin in the country's northern port of Tangier, local MAP news agency reported on Friday. The drug was concealed in three Italian-registered cars driven by Moroccan expatriates who were going back to Europe after summer vacations, a police source was quoted as saying. The drug was contained in three separate parcels of 540 kg, 210kg and 360 kg. The arrest of the suspected smugglers also involved an Italian national who was serving as a guide for the shipment of the substance from Morocco to Italy, MAP said. Despite the government's efforts to eradicate cannabis, which flourishes on 70,000 hectares of soil in the country's northern mountainous areas, Morocco remains the world's biggest provider of the drug. The north African country has also tightened the grip over international drug dealers by installing scanners in the ports of Tangier and Casablanca, enabling the officers to seize tons of hashish and scores of traffick...

Drug lord Mohamed El Ouazzani, known as El Nene, was allowed to stroll out of prison and probably fled to Spain to avoid serving the rest of an eight-year prison sentence. Six prison guards were jailed for allowing him to escape. Morocco had aimed to erase its cannabis industry by this year, a campaign given added momentum by suspicions that hashish was used to partly pay for dynamite that blew up trains in Madrid in 2004, killing 191 people. A Casablanca court jailed Mohamed Kharraz, better known as Cherif Bin Louidane, for eight years, the government said on Thursday. It ordered 5.2 million dirhams of his fortune to be seized and fined him 500,000 dirhams Moroccan drug baron was jailed along with the former head of Tangier's judicial police after a lengthy trial that pitted the Rabat authorities against powerful interests in the kingdom's northern cannabis growing region.Judicial police officers grabbed Kharraz in August 2006 at the Al Ghouroub (Sunset) cafe near the northern...