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اخر اخبار المغرب اليوم – اخبار المغرب العاجلة
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-07-15 01:55:00
A release by the National Council for Human Rights revealed that the judiciary’s management of a number of political and opinion trials that Morocco experienced between the years 1956 and 1999 was marred by widespread reliance on judicial police reports whose integrity was contested, and ignoring defense defenses and requests to investigate allegations of torture, in addition to issuing harsh punishments that in some cases amounted to death and life imprisonment. The publication, entitled “Prosecutions and Trials of a Political Contour from 1956 to 1999,” stated that the Equity and Reconciliation Commission held the judiciary partly responsible for the gross violations of human rights that the country witnessed, after the courts were unable, in a number of cases, to protect the pursuers from the abuses that preceded their referral to the judiciary or accompanied their trial. The book documents the work of a symposium organized by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission during the winter of 2005, in cooperation with the Association of Bar Associations in Morocco and the Faculty of Law in Casablanca, with the aim of diagnosing the imbalances that have characterized the course of justice in political files, and determining the extent to which the judiciary respects its independence, impartiality, and fair trial guarantees. The National Council for Human Rights cautioned that the opinions contained in the publication express those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect its institutional position, as the book is based on testimonies and studies presented by lawyers, jurists, and researchers, a number of whom defended the issues addressed in the symposium. The judiciary under pressure from the security concern. The introduction to the publication concluded that the courts’ handling of political files, the way they deal with defense rights and legal defences, and the almost unconditional recommendation in many cases of judicial police reports have revealed profound imbalances within the justice system. The document affirmed that the Equity and Reconciliation Commission did not hesitate to assign responsibility to the judiciary within the gross human rights violations known to Morocco, calling for a comprehensive reform of the judicial system and the rehabilitation of its various components, ensuring the independence of the judiciary and respect for the rights of litigants. According to the synthetic report of the symposium’s work, the defect was not necessarily due to the absence of legal texts, but rather to the primacy of political and security considerations over the rules of law, and the transformation of some legislation and judicial procedures into means of confronting political opponents or limiting the activity of parties, unions, the press, and protest movements. It appears from the totality of the cases presented that the path of violation began, in multiple cases, with arrest outside legal controls, then extending judicial custody or manipulating its start date, passing through allegations of torture and extracting confessions, before police reports were used as a basis for prosecution and conviction. 70% of the files are related to arbitrary arrest. Abdelaziz Bennani, a member of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, stated that the preliminary statistics of the Commission’s database showed that more than 70 percent of the requests submitted to it were related to arbitrary arrest. He added that about 4,600 detainees involved in the Commission’s files were brought to justice, which raised, according to his intervention, a question regarding the nature of detention that ends with a final judicial decision, even though the trial was preceded by serious violations or did not meet the conditions for a fair trial. The document considered that detention in irregular places constitutes the ultimate form of arbitrary detention, given the detainee’s isolation from the outside world and stripping him of legal protection. It also considered keeping people for weeks or months, and sometimes for years, under the name of theoretical guarding a violation of the right to freedom and physical and psychological integrity. The symposium identified a number of indicators that are supposed to be adopted in evaluating trials, including detention in unofficial places, violations of physical custody, the fate of requests to inspect traces of torture, the fate of complaints filed against those responsible for violations, and the extent of the balance between the powers of accusation and the rights of defense. The recall of protection laws after independence and the issuance of them stopped when legal texts dating back to the protection period continued to be used to prosecute Moroccan citizens after independence, most notably the Dahir of June 29, 1935, which was famous in legal and legal circles as the Dahir “All That Matters.” The text criminalized, in broad terms, acts such as incitement to strike or demonstrations, provoking disturbance, and harming order or public security. These are concepts that the interventions considered to be broad and capable of criminalizing acts that fall within the scope of exercising public freedoms. According to the presentation presented by lawyer Abdel Latif Aammo, this decree has been used since the second half of the 1960s, then its use expanded during the 1970s and 1980s to confront protest movements linked to the deterioration of economic and social conditions. The actions subject to follow-up, according to the document, included preparing for strikes, writing or distributing leaflets, meeting at the headquarters of parties and unions, and criticizing government policies in the areas of prices, education, and health, in addition to solidarity with strikers or detainees. Political or union affiliation, visiting party headquarters, and possession of publications issued by well-known organizations were also considered evidence of the commission of acts affecting public order, while the courts rejected, in several cases, defense requests aimed at examining traces of torture or investigating whether the period of probation had been exceeded. The document indicates that the courts used to include the formal defenses to the substance, and then did not answer them within the reasoning of the rulings. They also sometimes refused to discuss the elements that make up the crime, despite the defense’s adherence to the principle, “There is no crime and no punishment except by a text.” Students who were deprived of studying after imprisonment. Among the examples mentioned in the publication is the case of a group of students and teachers in the city of Tiznit, who were arrested in January 1981 after the appearance of writings and slogans on the walls related to the anniversary of the arrest of the National Union of Moroccan Students. The group members were sentenced to four months in prison, but some of the students were surprised, after leaving prison, by the decision to permanently expel them from the educational institution. After issuing a statement of solidarity denouncing their deprivation from continuing their studies, they were arrested again and charged with inciting a strike and disturbing public security, before they were sentenced to four years in prison, which they served in full, which led to their complete deprivation from studying. The document also touched on the case of Mohamed Krina Bakadir, who, according to the presentation in the book, died from torture inside a judicial police headquarters, following the arrest of participants in a solidarity demonstration with the Palestinian people on the occasion of Land Day in March 1979. The trial of political ideas and affiliations The follow-up extended, according to the release, to the trial of party ideas and affiliations, as the interventions reviewed the circumstances of the dissolution of the Moroccan Communist Party, and then the prosecution of a number of its former members, despite their lack of affiliation, after The decision to dissolve, to a prohibited organization. The document dealt with the arrest of Ali Yata and his companions in October 1963, following the issuance of a leaflet calling for stopping the war between Morocco and Algeria and resorting to dialogue in order to settle the border dispute. Although the leaflet expressed a political position rejecting the war, its authors were referred to the military court on charges of harming the state’s internal security, before they were released and the file was preserved. The publication also dealt with the prosecution of Ali Ya’ta and Shuaib Al-Rifi in 1969 on charges of re-establishing a dissolved association, after Ya’ta’s participation in a conference of communist and workers’ parties in Moscow. The ruling was based, according to the intervention, on the content of a political speech and its references to Marxist and Leninist thought, which made the trial seem closer to evaluating a political doctrine than proving specific criminal acts. The press and unions before the judiciary. The book devoted a section to follow-ups related to the press and union activity, noting that journalists and publishing managers were sometimes pursued because of the publication of statements issued by unions or human rights associations that have a legal presence. The newspaper director found himself, according to the presentation, required to answer the content of a statement he had not issued, or a strike organized by a union, while some trial sessions were taking place amid an intense security presence and restrictions on the presence of journalists and activists. The intervention concluded that the follow-ups were not targeting the union official or journalist alone, but rather were carrying a broader message to workers and political actors, with the aim of pushing them away from strikes, union work, and protest activity. The case of Noubir Al-Amawi The document stopped at the trial of Noubir Al-Amawi, the former Secretary-General of the Democratic Confederation of Labor, against the backdrop of statements published by the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” in 1992, which the government considered to contain offensive statements against her. Al-Amawi’s defense, according to the presentation, recorded a number of shortcomings, including the circumstances of his arrest in front of the union’s headquarters, and his prosecution before the Court of First Instance in Rabat, despite the claim of lack of jurisdiction, in addition to cordoning off the court and limiting the presence of solidarity activists. The intervention also talked about preventing foreign lawyers from attending the trial, refusing to summon members of the government to listen to them, and not responding to a number of legal defenses and defense requests. The presenter, lawyer Khaled Al-Sufyani, considered that the case constituted a model for a trial in which the conditions for balance between the two parties to the case were absent, amid a clear overlap between judicial considerations and the political and union context. Greater Marrakesh… 49 death sentences were requested. One of the most prominent files reopened was the Greater Marrakesh Trial in 1971, which included a large number of observers, and lawyers representing various Moroccan bodies participated in the defense. The intervention talked about arrests that took place at night, and the detention of a number of observers for long periods before being brought to justice, as well as allegations that they were subjected to multiple methods of torture during the preliminary investigation. The defense also raised the legality of the police reports and the circumstances in which they were written, and requested an investigation into complaints of torture, but the court rejected the defenses or did not have the legal effects that the lawyers demanded. The Public Prosecution collectively demanded the issuance of 49 death sentences, 122 life imprisonment sentences, and 21 five-year prison sentences, which the defense considered evidence that the accusation was based on the political ideas of the followers as much as it was based on the actions attributed to them. The trial ended with rulings ranging from death, imprisonment, and acquittal, amid the defense’s protest against the court’s reliance primarily on police reports, and the decision’s failure to include details of the discussions and defenses raised during the sessions. 159 defendants before the military court in Kenitra. In the file of the military trials in Kenitra in 1973, known as the case of Omar Dahkoun and those with him, the number of those accused initially reached 157 people, before other defendants were added, bringing the total number to 159 defendants. Among the followers were eight military personnel, while the rest were civilians belonging to multiple social and professional groups, including workers, farmers, professors, students, engineers, lawyers, journalists, and employees. The defense criticized the referral of civilians to a military court that does not explain its rulings in the manner approved before ordinary judiciary, but rather answers questions related to proving the crime and the aggravating and mitigating circumstances through voting. The intervention also recorded the court’s restriction of Omar Dahkoun’s right to talk about the types of torture he said he was subjected to during the preliminary investigation, as the president asked him to be brief, which, according to the defense, prevented him from presenting his full story before the judicial body. Heavy sentences were issued in the file, including death penalty, life imprisonment, and varying prison sentences, while the method of trial and the jurisdiction of the military judiciary to try civilians raised human and legal objections that continued after the end of the case. Al-Sarfati and those with him…a trial without an audience. The publication dealt with the January 1977 trial, known as the case of Abraham Al-Sarfati and those with him, in which 139 people were tried on charges related to harming the internal security of the state. Since the start of the first session, the defense recorded the absence of one of the most important pillars of a fair trial, which is publicity, after the security services prevented the families of the detainees, the public, and sometimes journalists, from entering the hall, and only lawyers wearing their professional uniforms were allowed to enter. The intervention confirmed that a number of defendants spent months in detention in unknown places, before being brought to justice, and that the Public Prosecution did not open a serious investigation into the allegations of torture or the conditions of detention. The court also restricted, according to the presentation, the interventions of lawyers and defendants, so that the trial ended with the issuance of heavy prison sentences, before distributing the convicts to prison institutions far from their families. Social protests turn into mass trials. The issue devoted a focus to the trials of the social events that Morocco witnessed in the years 1981, 1984, and 1990, which broke out in the context of strikes and protests related to living and social conditions. According to the document, these events were followed by mass arrests that included participants in the protests and people arrested in the streets or homes, in addition to union officials, politicians, and journalists. In the files of the Fez events of 1990, 100 detainees were brought before the criminal court, including minors, while the defense recorded discrepancies between the dates of arrest and the dates of being placed under theoretical guard and writing the reports. Some arrests were also made on December 16 and 17, despite the events occurring on December 14, which prompted the defense to maintain that there was no case of flagrante delicto, and to challenge the validity of the facts recorded in the police reports. The presentation talked about gathering followers into one files despite the different circumstances of their arrest and the actions attributed to them, in addition to refusing to call defense witnesses and combining the formal defenses with the substance without answering them clearly. Violations that extended into the 1990s. The release showed that the imbalances were not limited to the 1960s and 1970s, but rather continued during the 1980s and 1990s, albeit in different degrees and forms. It stopped at the military trial of the Rabat group in 1994, where the defense recorded the limited time allowed to prepare the file, the refusal to listen to witnesses regarding the conditions of detention, and the postponement of deciding on requests to inspect the effects of violence. One of the interventions also addressed the events of Tan-Tan in 1972, and the subsequent files in the southern provinces until the events of Laayoune in 1999, pointing to violations related to the duration of judicial custody, the conditions of detention, and the discrepancy between the reports and the facts. Reforming the judiciary to ensure non-repetition The symposium concluded that ensuring the non-recurrence of political trials and related violations requires more than amending some legal texts, as it requires building a judicial authority that is effectively independent of the executive authority and political and security considerations. The interventions called for strengthening the Public Prosecution’s oversight of the work of the judicial police, conducting actual and regular visits to places of physical custody, verifying arrest records and interrogation conditions, and immediately investigating allegations of torture and ill-treatment. It also recommended rehabilitating the role of the investigative judiciary, ensuring a balance between accusation and defence, not giving police reports absolute authority, as well as empowering defendants with medical expertise, listening to their witnesses, and making a clear decision on their lawyers’ defenses. The document stressed that justice reform also requires reviewing the composition of judges, conditions for entering the profession, and performance evaluation mechanisms, in addition to developing university research in the history of political trials and preserving archives and judicial memory.
