The case of Ali Lmrabet, this virtuoso of mystification, recalls that very categorical of Claas Relotius, who admitted to having invented quotes and scenes which he in fact never attended.
Painting “the political police” grappling with the private life of a few individuals has become the catch-all argument of Ali Lmrabet, who takes advantage of a complacent press to spread his inventions. His methods are reminiscent of those of Claas Relotius, a multi-award winning journalist from the famous Spiegel editorial staff who admitted in 2018 to having falsified some of his articles.
Middle East Eyemedia close to the decision makers of the gulf, the definitive organ of a few individuals in need of visibility, gave its green to ultra-fanciful, bogus articles bearing the signature of Ali Lmrabet, exhausting “the Moroccan deep state” and an “dark affair” (no it is not a Balzacian fiction) “an umpteenth state machination, etc.” Does MEE have an internal verification service of what its contributors write?
Mohamed Baâssou, a leading executive of the Islamist (movement) Al Adl Wal Ihsane (Justice and spirituality, unrecognized) had been arrested in the act of having sex with a divorced woman. Ali Lmrabet recognizes “flagrance” facts in his oddly arranged story, without common thread despite his pompous verbiage. It is the conspiratorial routine that follows its development in profound blindness, and without knowing where it would end.
Ali Lmrabet the “rapist”
Ali Lmrabet has a little history with unpunished crimes. He was recruited (in 1991) as an embassy secretary. He was assigned to Argentina (1992) where he became number two in the Buenos Aires Embassy. During this time, his heavy attentions to a local employee degenerated into a rape that he stifled for decades. He was fired (in 1993) for disciplinary reasons. He experienced his return to Morocco as a humiliation. For clear-sighted eyes, this disgrace was approaching: the greed of the man and his depredations, his duplicity and his perpetual intrigues deeply irritated. Alarming revelations about this man who pursued with furious hatred the women who refused him were recurrent.
Ali Lmrabet cherished ambitious illusions: he already coveted the portfolio of his ministry. Everything seemed to him to presage the capture of his chimera, for his rapid star was rising rapidly. From obvious clues he felt he could become a leading man. A few decades later, he sees police reports everywhere, and machinations which he describes at will.
A non-investigation without sources, without citations
From his dungeon in Barcelona, Ali Lmrabet has developed an unprecedented conception of the journalist, where the facts engender each other to lead to a single conclusion that is intoned constantly: the secret services are behind all sex scandals. Much more serious; Ali Lmrabet strives with unparalleled ardor to exert pressure on events favorable to his ideas, at the risk of distorting the truth. It is with astonishing gravity that he affirms the most insane facts, which have never existed except in his brain; but he does not believe them less true, he is sure of that.
He writes, for example: “In front of the magistrate, Baâssou’s companion presented herself as a servant, denied everything that the police accused her of in the reports and cleared the leader of the jamaât of any moral failing”, information invented from scratch, amplified and already put into circulation by others. Morality being the sovereign virtue of the Jamaâ, a man lost in debauchery will tarnish the image of a reputable organization attached to the precepts of Islam, but Ali Lmrabet does not care.
To give depth to his account, he indicates that “According to several criminal lawyers accustomed to this kind of political trial, this accusation, which has neither head nor tail, has the sole purpose of keeping the accused in prison”. Imaginary lawyers, nameless, of course.
The wife was pressured… by the brotherhood
The defendant’s wifenot only refused to file a complaint, but she asked for the release of her husband”says Lmrabet who points “political significance” of this case citing former accomplices in infamy such as Hicham Mansouri, Taoufik Bouachrine, Hajar Raissouni, Soulaiman Raissouni, Omar Radi), etc. Not only is everything false, but the reality is that the wife of the old fellow has been put under severe pressure by the brotherhood so that she does not file a complaint. Does Ali Lmrabet ignore the sectarian nature of Jamaâ? Of course not.
Ali Lmrabet seizes on the slightest gossip and inflates it with pleasure. The frog, in a short time, becomes an ox. “How many foreign notables have been arrested in the company of minors of both sexes and released after verification of their illustrious condition?” he asserted, rehashing the old cliché reported by the yellow press (which he denounces however).
Desperate, Ali Lmrabet no longer belongs to himself. His mission to smear and defame imposes itself on him, and he obeys the torrent. His investigations are nothing but stories that collect all the mud of lying anecdotes. Apparently, nothing will be able to save him from the fatal necessities of a role which at each moment becomes more demanding, more difficult to sustain. What wouldn’t Ali do to please his Algerian masters?
From his dungeon in Barcelona, Ali Lmrabet refurnishes bogus investigations and falsified articles