Morocco's harder line on security challenges reforms

The trial of 50 suspected terrorists highlights the struggle between security and human rights.

from the April 9, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 2

Page 1 | 2

Mouhtab showed this reporter a video taken on a cellphone that was smuggled into a Moroccan prison. The video showed men sleeping wall-to-wall on the floors of overcrowded cells as well as unsanitary cooking and shower facilities.

"It is very possible that detention policies in Algeria, Morocco, and other countries in the region help create radicals who will eventually be released back into society, where they can more effectively spread their views among youths and others," writes Emily Hunt in a report on terrorism in North Africa for the Washington Institute on Near East Policy.

The US State Department noted in a 2006 report on Morocco that, "Attorneys were not always appointed, however, or, if provided, they were poorly paid, resulting often in inadequate representation." The judges on the country's highest court are appointed by the king.

Morocco's Equity and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 2004 by King Mohammed IV to examine abuses under his father's regime, King Hassan II. One key recommendation was to create an independent judiciary, as is outlined in the country's Constitution.

In court last month, some of the defendants took the opportunity to shout to journalists in attendance about their situation. Some said that they had been tortured. The group's leader, Hassan Khattab, was rounded up in a mass arrest after the 2003 Casablanca bombings and then was freed under a broad royal pardon in 2005. Other men shouted that they, too, had been previously subject to mass arrests, which some rights groups say has netted thousands.

"I was captured after the Casablanca bombing. This is the second time they have detained me. They have destroyed my life, my family, for no reason," shouted one man standing on a bench in the defendant's box.

A Human Rights Watch report issued in 2004 about arrests and detentions in connection with the Casablanca bombings warned that Morocco's handling of the aftermath threatened the country's unprecedented reform process.

"Important elements of the progress made during the last 15 years are now endangered by the way that authorities have rounded up and imprisoned thousands of Moroccans accused of links to terrorism. The credible reports of torture and mistreatment of these suspects, and the clear denial of their civil rights during the judicial process, suggest that the broader freedoms Moroccans have enjoyed during the last decade- and-a-half can be reversed," said the report.

1 | Page 2