Morocco Savvy

Over 800 unlicensed guides were arrested in Fes during 2006, the local tourism police says.

The tourism brigade in Fes arrested 840 people last year for fraud and impersonating an official guide, Moroccan news agency MAP says.

These so-called “faux guides” do not have the necessary license to act as tourist guides. Most of the unlicensed guides were arrested in or near Fes’ tourist hotspots like hotels, monuments, souks and the train station.

The tourism brigade of the local police was set up specifically to protect foreign visitors from fraud and other harassment.

The Moroccan government has raised the terrorist threat level to “red” amid a wave of terrorism-related arrests.

There’s a “red alert” active in Morocco. The interior ministry has raised the level on its security threat scale after seven people were arrested in Meknes on Tuesday on suspicion of “criminal and terrorist acts”.

According to L’Economiste newspaper, the suspects, all between 24 and 26 years old, were planning attacks against military barracks, universities, hotels and government offices. Four of the arrested people have been released after questioning.

More than 30 people were arrested since Tuesday in Fnidek, Tetouan and Tangier, another daily, Al Bayane, adds. 

Increased security was notable near tourist hotspots in Tangier, Casablanca and Rabat, Al Bayane writes, while L’Economiste says added controls have come into force at Morocco’s borders. 

The security warning comes in the wake of a series of bomb attacks in bordering Algeria, which killed at least 7 people earlier this week. Those attacks have been attributed to the terrorist organization Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat.

The group recently said it was changing its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Land of the Maghreb and announced that it would widen its activities to other countries in North Africa.

Morocco’s insurance companies have issued a list of the four most popular methods for car thieves - essential reading.

There are no statistics available for car theft in Morocco, let alone for the number of tourists whose cars are stolen. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the risk is very small.

Still, if you want to know what to look out for, today’s L’Economiste newspaper describes the four most common schemes used by car thieves.

The list was made public by the insurance companies in Morocco. Here’s their advice:

• never get out of your car without taking the keys and locking all doors
• when thieves threaten to use violence, let them have the car
• call the police even if the thieves abandon your car, they may have left drugs or stolen property inside that could get you into trouble later
• make copies of all your car documents and leave them at your hotel, along with the spare keys, as you will need them when you report a car theft

And here are the latest creative ways to steal a car in Morocco.

The Rear Window
You get in your car and you’re ready to go. Like any good driver, you look over your shoulders before you leave. That’s when you spot the large piece of paper or cardboard on your rear window.

Your first impulse is to get out of your car to remove the paper. It will take just a second, so you leave the car keys in the ignition, your bag inside and the door open.

When you are behind the car, the thief moves in, getting behind the wheel and taking off with your car.

The Fake Accident
As you drive along the road, one moped drives in front of you, another one behind you. Both have two people on them. Suddenly, the one in front breaks and slides. As you hit the breaks too, the passenger on the back seat of the moped disappears under your bumper.

Horrified, you realize you may have hit him. You dash out of the car to see if he’s alright. By the time you reach him, he’s already up again, back on the moped and off to nowhere.

The passenger from the moped behind you, meanwhile, has run over to your car. He finds the door open, the key in the ignition, your valuables still inside. And off he goes. 

The Invisibility Cloak
You return to your car, only to find that it’s gone. It’s nowhere to be seen. After a few minutes you resign to the bad news and head for the police station.

Having spent hours to file the police report, you return to your hotel room and phone the insurance company back home.

Meanwhile, back in the street where you last saw your car, thieves are thanking you for allowing them all the time in the world to take your car away. While you are sweating in a police station, they remove the car cover they had draped over your vehicle and get ready to move.

The Tow Truck
Not necessarily a trick that is used on tourists, because the thieves need to know how long a car will stay on the street unattended. It is used mostly outside offices.

The thieves arrive wit a tow truck and casually load a car on it. The scene doesn’t cause any attention. How unusual is it to see a car being towed away?

According to L’Economiste, the tow truck scheme is very popular with Toyota Corollas, and it has only been reported in Rabat so far.

Apparently, most cars in Morocco are stolen as a source of spare parts.

• More tips for driving around Morocco

Morocco sets up an anti-corruption office, and public officials will have to publish their assets and business interests.

The new Central Corruption Prevention Office will work with prosecutors and courts and serve as both an adviser and a watchdog to the government. A high-profile personality is expected to be chosen as the office’s chairman.

The appointment of an anti-corruption czar is part of a series of government decisions aimed to tackle the problem. Other measures include the publication of assets and business interests of public officials and international cooperation in the recovery of proceeds from corruption.

For the last three years, Transparency International (TI) has given Morocco a mark of 3.2 on its “Corruption Perception Index”. The world’s least corrupt countries - Finland, Iceland and New Zealand - earned a 9.6 last year, while Haiti was deemed the most corrupt place on earth with a score of 1.8.

• Who is fit to be Morocco’s anti-corruption czar? Share your thoughts

The government sends a new road law to parliament, proposing a points system for driver’s licenses and steep new fines.

Under the proposed scheme, new drivers will get a temporary driver’s license for two years. If they collect 12 points within that period, they lose the license and will be barred from applying for a new one for two years.

Once you get through the trial period, you can get a license for 5 years and worry that you could lose it once you accumulate 24 points. The license-for-life will be axed under the new law.

The number of punitive points that could cost you your license is based on the severity of a traffic violation. You can lose up to 6 points in one go, when you burn a red light, for example. Drunk driving and other serious violations mean that you will lose your license immediately. And pay a fine, of course.

The fines in the new law are twice as high as in the existing rules. They range from 700 dirham for “excessive use of a car horn” to 30,000 dirham for driving under the influence. That’s US$ 3,500, close to a working class annual income in Morocco.

Those traffic fines are already making waves among parliamentarians. They believe that the steep new sanctions will only encourage corruption.

Besides, some members of parliament argue, the government should not just be tough on drivers, but also work to increase road safety itself. They will ask the government to improve road conditions and traffic signs.

The law also proposes regular inspections of mechanical shops, finally acknowledging that despite the incredible ingenuity of the average car mechanic, many accidents on Moroccan roads are caused by the terrible state that a lot of cars are in.

Finally, driving schools will also be met with more scrutiny.

It all makes sense. But as newspaper Le Matin reports in its article about the new law, the discussion in parliament will be “tempestuous”.

• Here’s the concise Moroccan road survival guide from the Morocco FAQ

The owners of a Casablanca hotel get two years for “aiding and abetting” prostitution - but the hotel could be allowed to re-open.

Last November, police raided the Byblos Suites Hotel on Boulevard Mohamed Zerktouni in Casablanca. After searching the hotel’s 38 rooms, bar, nightclub, and restaurant, they arrested 45 prostitutes and 27 men who were making use of the women’s services that night. 

All were convicted of prostitution, but got away with a fine.

The owner of the hotel, Ahmed Fayad, and his son Saad, however, were prosecuted for “aiding and abetting” prostitution. A Casablanca court has now sentenced the couple to two years in prison and a 2,000 dollar fine, L’Économiste reports.

The police shut down the hotel (”The most favoured place for businessmen and those seeking discoveries“) after the raid, but the court did not uphold that decision. Once the case has gone through appeal, the hotel could re-open. 

The owners’ lawyer accused the police of a deliberate campaign to single out and “destroy” the hotel’s owners, saying that plenty of other hotels in the city allow “the sexes to mingle”.

“Why choose this particular hotel?”, he asked the court.

The prosecution denied the allegations and invited the lawyer to name the officers who he believes were involved in the frame-up.

Moroccan authorities have pursued an active campaign against sex tourism in the last years. Around half of the arrested clients in the Byblos case were foreigners, mostly from the Gulf states.

• Find out all you need to know (well, obviously not all) about Moroccan nightlife over at the Morocco FAQ