16/09/2023
For all who think that CIDM is not being unbiased in writing about Morocco and for all who prefer to believe the empty rhetoric of the Moroccan authorities:
Morocco cracked down on journalists and critics, including via apparently politically motivated prosecutions for criminal offenses.
Criminal Justice System
The Code of Penal Procedure gives a defendant the right to contact a lawyer after 24 hours in police custody, extendable to 36 hours.
But detainees do not have the right to have a lawyer present when police interrogate or present them with their statements for signature. In recent years, police agents often coerced or tricked detainees into signing self-incriminating statements, which judges later relied on to convict even when the defendants repudiated those statements in court.
Freedom of Expression
On July 30, several global media reported that Pegasus, a potent spyware developed by Israeli firm NSO Group, might have been used to infiltrate the smartphones of many individuals in Morocco. Pegasus, which NSO Group claims is exclusively sold to governments, is capable of accessing contact lists, reading emails and text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, mobile phone tracking, and hijacking the target device's microphone and video camera to turn it into a surveillance device. Journalists and Moroccan human rights activists and journalists were among the targets.
In other cases, Morocco has arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned several critics not overtly for what they said but instead for offenses related to s*x or embezzlement, where the evidence was either scant or dubious, or the trial involved clear fair-trial violations.
Radi, an outspoken critic who has long been subject to state harassment, has been in detention since his arrest on July 29, 2020.
Examining the facts in the case on which the espionage charges against Radi are based, Human Rights Watch found that they consist of nothing but standard journalistic work, corporate due-diligence studies that Radi performed as a paid consultant, and his routine meetings with foreign diplomats. The case file, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, included no evidence that Radi had provided classified information to anyone or that he even had access to such information.
Several due process violations were recorded during the trial, which Human Rights Watch observed. The court never provided a substantive justification for holding Radi for one year in pretrial detention. The court refused to hear defense witnesses, and admitted a written statement by a prosecution witness but refused to summon him, thus denying the defense’s right to cross-examine him. While Radi had to fight in court for months to get his case file, websites closely tied with security services obtained leaked copies even before the trial started, and based on those leaks, published scores of articles affirming Radi’s guilt.
Monjib, Raissouni, Radi, and others were subjected to relentless character assassination efforts in scores of articles published in websites known locally as “slander media” because of their incessant and seemingly coordinated attacks against critics of the authorities. Known for their proximity to security services, these websites have published in past years thousands of articles including personal information on targeted individuals. The information included banking and property records, screenshots of private electronic conversations, allegations about s*xual relationships, and intimate biographical details.
Source: HRW World Report Morocco and Western Sahara
