End clap for the Thami Benani affair which held public opinion in suspense for years! The criminal chamber of first instance at the Casablanca Court of Appeal sentenced each of the two young men involved in this murder to 20 years in prison.
It is the beginning of the end of a long fight of a mother who has long sought to highlight the tragedy of which her son has been the victim, and who had in doing so won the sympathy of a large segment of society. .
During the trial, the defense of the two defendants in the case had tried, during long pleadings since last Friday, to refute the charges against them, and to affirm their innocence.
Lawyers for the two young defendants felt that their clients had suffered an injustice following their arrest in the absence of evidence that they had committed murder, as lawyer Mohamed Sinaoui stated: “The defense of Benani talks about the fact that the latter is dead and did not say murder, and death can result from an accident or an overdose…. “.
After long years of struggle, during which she denounced “negligence”, “attempts” to close the file without further action, and “pressure” exerted so that the culprits are neither accused nor imprisoned, Hayat, the mother of Thami Benani, finally got the long-awaited answer, and the murder thesis was finally confirmed by the public prosecutor.
Indeed, during the hearing of Friday, July 7, the general prosecutor’s office of the Court of Appeal of Casablanca had surprised the assistance by affirming that the crime was established.
The representative of the public prosecutor thus confirmed that the murder of Benani had been proven, stressing that the head had been found separated from the body, in addition to the presence of bruises on the body.
The Deputy Attorney General pointed out that the place where the crime was re-enacted was not the same place where the body was found, indicating that the killers had abandoned Thami and quickly left.
He also noted that the pants worn by the victim appeared to be torn, which was considered by the medical examiner to be a trend among young people, indicating that the tearing of the pants resulted from an act of pulling in that the victim was dragged, thus concluding that Thami had been the victim of violence.
In this regard, he requested the maximum sentences against the accused detained in Oukacha prison.
For its part, the defense of the civil party exposed the details of the disappearance of the young Thami Benani since 2007, stressing that he was celebrating a birthday with his friends before disappearing.
The defense also asked the court to reopen the investigation into the incident by filing a motion to determine the location of the parents through phone numbers at the time of the crime.
As a reminder, the young Thami Bennani, only 17 years old at the time of the events, had disappeared in mysterious circumstances more than 15 years ago in Mohammedia.