Divers found the body of missing Moroccan engineering student Sami El Yousfi Alaoui at the Port de Commerce Brest at 4:00am on Wednesday.
The body was identified as El Yousfi Alaoui because of the passport found in his pockets.
El Yousfi Alaoui, a student at Brest National Engineering School (ENIB), had been missing since Sunday.
He had not been seen or heard from since 3:00am of that day, when friends reported he went to the bathroom and did not return. According to the bouncers of the nightclub where he was, they saw him leave the club alone and he did not return.
The search, directed by investigators from Brest’s U.A.P. group, mobilized firemen, maritime gendarmes, divers, and drones.
On Tuesday, a Rennes police canine tracked El Yousfi Alaoui’s trail to a nearby harbor. However, they reported that the scent vanished due to the heat.
El Yousfi Alaoui was benefitting from a long-established exchange agreement between ENIB and Mohammed V University in Rabat.
His friends and fellow students described him as “serious and shy.”
ENIB Director Alexis Michel said that El Yousfi Alaoui was a gifted, motivated student, very responsible and empowered, and “he perfectly exemplified the values of our engineering school such as solidarity and ethics.”
After his disappearance, about 30 of El Yousfi Alaoui’s friends and colleagues distributed 2,000 leaflets with their friend’s photo, repeating the police request for witnesses that had been made on Monday.
There had been no camera around the nightclub to capture footage, and El Yousfi Alaoui’s cell phone was found, abandoned, in a street near the nightclub.
Investigators will continue their inquiries into his cause of death. El Yousfi Alaoui “had no problems, neither with drugs nor depression,” according to a close friend of his.
The Brest public prosecutor’s office is expected to order an autopsy.