Sex-obsessed police chief to be executed

RABAT (Reuter) - A senior Moroccan police officer who confessed to having sex with more than 1,600 women in three years was sentenced to death by a Casablanca court yesterday.

Haj Mohamed Mustapha Tabet, 54, the Chief Police Commissioner, was convicted of rape, deflowering virgins, abducting women, inciting debauchery, violence and assault at sex orgies in a flat he kept for that purpose.

Opposition newspapers said Tabet had been allowed to act with impunity even though the authorities knew what he was doing. Muslim fundamentalists demanded death by stoning or crucifixion rather than by firing squad. Tabet, 54, who is married with two wives and five children, has 10 days to appeal.

Prosecutors showed the court 118 videos of Tabet and his friends having sex with 518 women and girls over a period of three years. Tabet filmed the orgies with two remote-controlled video cameras hidden in his flat. One lawyer fainted while the videos were being screened and had to be taken to hospital.

Tabet kept a numbered list of his sex partners on a computer. Dressed in smart suits and always carrying a walkie-talkie, he picked up women in the street and bought them pastries before taking them to his flat, lawyers said. In several cases he demanded sex in return for issuing passports or other official documents.

Tabet told the court his victims were mainly prostitutes or willing sex partners. He said he suffered from sexual obsessions and had had sex with more than 1,600 women in three years.

He denied using violence. Lawyers said videos screened in court showed him beating women and girls while forcing them to have sex.

Tabet's superior officer, Ahmed Ouachi, was jailed for life for destroying evidence about Tabet. Ten other senior police officerswere jailed for between three and 20 years for complicity.