Dr. Albert Abraham Epstein, a French Jewish physician, who has been practicing medicine in Morocco, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and fined $350,000 in Oudja yesterday following his conviction on charges of drug smuggling and evasion of foreign currency regulations. His son, Benoit, 23, was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment on charges of drug addiction and another Frenchman got a ten-month sentence.
Dr. Epstein was arrested at Oudja airport last month as he was about to take off for Nice in his private plane with his wife and son. Police claimed they found 100 kilograms of pure “kiff,” a local form of marijuana, aboard the plane and an undisclosed sum in foreign currency. Dr. Epstein pleaded not guilty. He claimed at his trial that he knew nothing of the drugs or the money and suggested that they could have been planted on the plane by the police or by his son.
Dr. Epstein lived in Natanya, Israel, during the early 1950s. He has since established a private practice in Oudja and runs a hospital for surgery. During his trial the Moroccan newspaper “L’Opinion” alleged that he was a “notorious Israeli secret agent” and demanded that he be tried for espionage. However, no espionage charges were filed against Dr. Epstein.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
