Leon Baptiste, Reported Missing in Morocco, Is Serving a Prison Sentence in Marrakech

Leon Baptiste, the British sprint coach reported missing in Morocco last week, is in a prison in Marrakech, convicted of sexually assaulting a minor. BBC Sport revealed the conviction on Wednesday, having found the case in Moroccan online court records and put it to the authorities there. The arrest came in Marrakech in May. Baptiste, 41, is serving eight months at Al-Oudaya prison, a source at Morocco’s justice ministry told the broadcaster.

A Moroccan court imposed 10 months and an appeal court cut it to eight. The ministry source said Baptiste is in good health and is in custody “following his conviction by the competent judicial authorities in connection with a misdemeanour case.” Morocco’s Public Prosecution Office told BBC Sport the imprisonment followed a court ruling over “his involvement in a criminal case.” The age of majority in Morocco is 18. In a statement to the same outlet, the Foreign Office said: “We are supporting a British national who is detained in Morocco and are in contact with the authorities.”

His athletes had heard nothing from him since a message in May saying he would be away “for a while.” The Guardian and the Telegraph reported on Aug. 14 that he could not be reached, that his last contact had been roughly two months earlier, and that UK Athletics, citing confidentiality, would not discuss him. Marathon Handbook reported the disappearance days later. On Tuesday a resignation reached the group he coached, sent by someone else on his behalf, giving ill health as the reason and no further detail. BBC Sport published the conviction the next day, and the Guardian followed on Thursday without reporting what he had been convicted of.

Baptiste won 200m and 4x100m relay gold for England at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi and moved into coaching after retiring at 28. He is named beside four publicly funded British athletes on British Athletics’ Olympic and Paralympic World Class Programme lists for 2025/26: Charlie Dobson, Zac Shaw, Ali Smith and Marcus Perrineau-Daley. All four won medals at the Paris Games in 2024. Shaw and Smith ran in the British quartet that took Paralympic silver in the 4x100m Universal Relay, Perrineau-Daley won silver in the 100m T52 and Dobson an Olympic bronze in the 4x400m relay. As the Guardian first reported, UK Athletics paid Baptiste as a consultant sprint coach at its Loughborough base.

Both championships he was due to work at went ahead without him. Shaw won the Commonwealth 100m T12 title in Glasgow on July 30 in 10.89, and England Athletics’ report on that evening’s session at Scotstoun Stadium gives his coach as “Leon Baptiste, Cleethorpes.” At the European Championships in Birmingham, Dobson finished fourth in his 400m semi-final in 45.18 and missed the final, then ran the anchor leg as Britain took 4x400m silver in 2:59.19 on the closing day. Adam Gemili and the relay coach Martyn Rooney covered some of the coaching, and BBC Sport was told the group’s training suffered badly.

UK Athletics requires anyone coaching athletes on its World Class Programme or a performance development pathway to hold a coaching license, valid three years and conditional on a criminal-records certificate the governing body finds satisfactory. Its safeguarding regulations make a conviction for “a criminal offence against or concerning a Child” what they call “conclusive proof of grounds for action.” Those regulations reach convictions under UK law and do not extend to convictions handed down elsewhere.

UK Athletics, British Athletics and England Athletics had published nothing about Baptiste as of Friday. BBC Sport says it asked UK Athletics to comment. No replacement coach has been named.