UPI
RABAT, Morocco, April 7 (UPI) — A French citizen has been released from jail in Morocco after serving five months for a drug crime committed by a distant cousin with the same name.
Rachid Alamin, 29, was freed Friday evening, Radio France Internationale reported.
Alamin lives with his wife and children in Halluin, a town near the Belgian border, and runs a teen center there. He went to Morocco in November last year after learning an international arrest warrant had been issued for him, hoping to straighten out the misunderstanding, friends and relatives say.
His legal troubles stem from the arrest of a Belgian citizen who was arrested in 2009 on the border between Spain and Morocco with about 80 pounds of marijuana. The Belgian told investigators he got the drugs from Rachid Alamin.
A man of that name living in Spain was traced, arrested and spent 20 months in prison in Morocco. But in a twist that Christian Vanneste, Alamin’s member of parliament called “Kafkaesque,” police also issued an arrest warrant for his distant relative.
Alamin has joint French-Moroccan citizenship while his wife is a Moroccan national.
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