Global Courant 2023-05-31 21:03:02
The dead from ingesting adulterated alcohol in the Moroccan city of Meknés amount to nine people, in addition to a seriously intoxicated person admitted to the resuscitation unit, according to sources from the Ministry of Health, who pointed out that it is a group of acquaintances who bought the substance to consume together.
As a result of the deaths, the Moroccan Police arrested on Tuesday, May 30, the owner of a grocery store who allegedly sold them the substance and his assistant, a minor.
According to health sources, the first admissions for poisoning at the Mohamed V Hospital in Meknés occurred on Monday the 29th, when the lifeless bodies of two men arrived, one of them 48 years old and the other of age to be confirmed.
On Tuesday the 30th, another six corpses of men between the ages of 40 and 70 were transferred to the hospital and two more people were admitted to the resuscitation unit with severe poisoning, of whom a 47-year-old man died.
In the absence of confirmation with the analyzes that are made of the samples taken from the bodies, the thesis of the toilets is that they died of methanol poisoning, having ingested adulterated alcohol.
According to a police source on Wednesday, May 31, the 67-year-old owner of a grocery store and his 17-year-old employee were arrested on Tuesday afternoon, May 30, as responsible for the sale of adulterated alcohol.
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The source added that dozens of empty plastic bottles of a disinfectant product that would correspond to what they allegedly sold as alcohol for human consumption were confiscated in the establishment’s registry.
The detainees, both in police custody, are being investigated for their alleged involvement in the possession and sale of alcoholic products that are harmful to public health and for causing the death of their consumers.
The competent Prosecutor’s Office is in charge of investigating the case, the source reported, adding that the relationship between the deaths and the alcoholic products they ingested, subjected to laboratory analysis, is now being determined.
Alcohol consumption is restricted in Morocco, since it is not only socially frowned upon, but alcoholic beverages have very high prices for supporting a large number of taxes.
Faced with this situation, clandestine distilleries and the sale of strong alcohols with cheap prices in clandestine abound, mainly spirits produced by hand and without proper sanitary guarantees.
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In September 2022, around twenty people died in the Moroccan town of Ksar el Kedib, in the north of the country, after consuming adulterated alcohol.
