Moroccan police have seized 1.1 tons of cannabis resin in the country's northern port of Tangier

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 traffickers. In Tangier alone, customs officers seized in 2007 no less than 35 tons of hashish, up 25 percent from 2006.

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Morocco had aimed to erase its cannabis industry by this year

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 port city of Tangier, acting on a warrant issued after a separate drugs trial years earlier, newspapers said.The arrest surprised locals for whom Kharraz had seemed virtually immune from the law and benefited from a reputation for generosity among the poor of a region neglected for decades by the central government, the papers said.He named over 30 members of the security services as being implicated in the drugs trade including Abdelaziz Izzou, head of the Tangier judicial police from 1996 to 2003, who was suspended from his job as head of security at Morocco's royal palaces.Izzou was imprisoned for 18 months and had 700,000 dirhams seized by the state. Two others were jailed including Kharraz's brother while nine people were acquitted including another top former Tangier police official, the government said.
Those imprisoned were found guilty of offences including international drug trafficking, abuse of power, incitement to illegal immigration and failing to report crimes.But the north African country is still the world's biggest hashish producer.
The dark green fern-like plant grows well in poor soil of the northern Rif mountains and has come to be known as "green gold" because it staves off grinding poverty for thousands of local families.
Smugglers hide the drug in containers and trucks or use powerful speedboats to ship it to Barcelona in Spain or Marseille in France.
Moroccan customs said drugs with a value of 30 million dirhams were seized at the port of Tetouan near Tangier last year, up six times from a year earlier.
But catching the top criminals and keeping them behind bars is still proving difficult.

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