Ex-HPD officer skips to Morocco ahead of sentencing for sex assault

Former Honolulu police officer Michael Tarmoun, who failed to show up for sentencing in state court in October for sexually assaulting a Waikiki prostitute, is back in his native Morocco, said Keith Kiuchi, lawyer for A-1 Bail Bonds.

"The bondsman has located the defendant, given the prosecuting attorney the location, down to the street where he is in Rabat, Morocco," Kiuchi said.

He said the bondsman cannot return Tarmoun to Hawaii to face sentencing because it does not have a U.S. Marshals fugitive warrant.

The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Morocco.

A-1 is on the hook for the $50,000 bail it guaranteed for Tarmoun’s court appearances. The bail bond company is fighting an order to forfeit the $50,000.

Kiuchi said Tarmoun would not have been able to leave the country if the prosecutor had followed up and taken away Tarmoun’s passport after a state jury found him guilty in June. After all, he said, it was the prosecutor who asked the court to order Tarmoun to surrender his passport.

Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario denied the prosecutor’s request to revoke Tarmoun’s bail after the jury returned a guilty verdict June 14, but did order Tarmoun to turn in his passport.

Del Rosario denied A-1’s request Wednesday to set aside the bail forfeiture.

A jury found Tarmoun, 38, guilty of second-degree sexual assault for forcing a prostitute to have sex with him by threatening her with arrest. The crime is a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The prostitute told the jury Tarmoun picked her up in Waikiki on July 19, 2009, and took her to a Piikoi Street apartment where he threatened to put her in jail if she didn’t have sex with him.

Tarmoun denied knowing that the woman was a prostitute when he picked her up and denied having sex with her. He said he picked her up in the early morning after he completed his overnight shift in Waikiki.

His girlfriend testified the apartment is hers and that she was out of town at the time. She filed for a temporary restraining order two weeks after the incident.

Tarmoun’s wife testified that the car he used to pick up the prostitute is his. She filed for divorce three weeks after the jury returned its guilty verdict.

The Honolulu Police Department said it placed Tarmoun on restricted duty at the start of the criminal investigation against him and put him on paid administrative leave in October. The department fired him after the guilty verdict.