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French man serves five months in Moroccan jail for having the wrong name

A Frenchman has been freed after spending nearly five months in a Moroccan jail for having the wrong name. Rachid Alamin was accused of being a drug-smuggler in a case for which a distant relative of the same name was already serving jail time.

France 3
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Alamin, who has joint French and Moroccan nationality, walked free late on Friday night after four and a half months in prison in the northern Moroccan town of Tetouan.

The 29-year-old, who runs a leisure centre for teenagers in Halluin, a French town near the Belgian border, was arrested in November 2011when, having heard that an international arrest warrant had been issued for him, he went to Morocco to clear his name.

His wife, who has Moroccan nationality and accompanied him, phoned friends and family when he failed to come out of the airport.

Since then he has been shared a dirty prison cell with 40 other prisoners, taking a shower once a week, badly clothed and depressed, according to his friend Hamza El Kostiti.

He has only left the prison for the 20 hearings that have been held into his case.

Alamin was accused of supplying drugs to a Belgian arrested on the Spanish-Moroccan border in July 2009 with 36 kilos of cannabis in his possession.

The man did indeed name Rachid Alamin as his supplier.

But not the Rachid Alamin then living in Alluin, awaiting the birth of his second child. He was talking about another Rachid Alamin, a distant relative of about 40 years of age who lived in Spain.

Moroccan police tracked him down via his mobile phone number and he served 20 months in prison for the crime.

But that didn’t stop them arresting the Rachid Alamin who lived in France.

Local MP Christian Vanneste described the case as “Kafkaesque”.

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