Mayor of Tangier Mounir Lemouri under international search warrant for forgery

The Public Prosecution in Tangier placed the mayor of the city and the regional official of the Authenticity and Modernity Party, Munir al-Limouri, under the penalty of a national and international search warrant, after he left Morocco on Thursday evening for Spain, at a time when investigations are continuing in the case of forgery of voting papers during the legislative elections of September 23, 2026. How was the forgery discovered? The Public Prosecution revealed that the case started from the seizure of a bag containing thousands of pre-filled electoral papers inside one of the voting offices at Al-Quds School in the neighborhood of According to the data of the Public Prosecution, the deputy head of one of the voting offices, with the help of the head of the office, withdrew voting papers from inside the office and hid them in a bag that took him out of school, before working in coordination with other people to reintroduce them to two other voting offices. One of the most prominent evidence adopted by the Public Prosecution is the different quality of ink used in the seized papers from the ink approved inside the voting offices. Five detainees and judicial proceedings resulted in the placement of five people under arrest Custody, including two heads of voting offices and two vice-presidents, along with a fifth person, against the background of suspicion of “compromising the conduct of the voting process and fraud and participation in it.” The Public Prosecution confirmed that it "will continue to follow this file to submit the necessary requests within the framework of its keenness on the strict application of the law." Al-Limouri fled and denied the charges and Munir al-Limouri's name appeared in the investigations after he was mentioned by one of the five detainees, prompting the judicial authorities to seek to organize a confrontation between them. The mayor, however, was not found at his home. It was found that he left the homeland on Thursday evening towards Spain, before the issuance of national and international search warrants against him. In later statements, Lemouri denied any attempt to escape justice, stressing that his travel was for professional and commercial purposes and to meet with business partners. These developments come in the midst of a heated political debate over the results of the September 23 elections, as Abdelilah Benkirane previously refused to participate in a government led by the Party of Authenticity and Modernity, protesting the forgery of Tangier itself. The Lemur case increases the pressure The party is in the stage of forming government alliances, while Tangier is awaiting the results of the ongoing judicial investigation.