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Morocco: Counter-Terror Crackdown Sets Back Rights Progress

Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
NEWS
October 22, 2004
Posted to the web October 22, 2004
Nairobi
Morocco's campaign against suspected Islamist militants is undermining the
significant human rights progress the country has made in recent years, Human
Rights Watch has said in a new report released on Thursday, October 21, 2004.
After suicide bombers attacked Casablanca on May 16, 2003, authorities adopted
sweeping counter-terror legislation and arrested more than 2 000 suspected
militants, subjecting many to threats and abuse.
"Detainees are on a fast-track to conviction because prosecutors and judges
show little interest in how the police obtained their statements," said Sarah
Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's executive director for the Middle East and
North Africa Division. "Their treatment shows that the human rights advances in
Morocco have largely bypassed the courts."
The 70-page report, "Human Rights at a Crossroads," features interviews with
the lawyers and family members of Moroccan prisoners who said that their
interrogators had subjected them to physical and mental abuse, in some cases
amounting to torture, in order to extract confessions or to induce them to sign
a statement they had not made. Many were held incommunicado by police beyond
the legal time limit and did not have prompt access to defense counsel.
According to the report, the legislation extends to 12 days the time police can
hold a terror suspect before being brought before a judge, and to 10 days the
time they can be held before consulting a lawyer. The legislation further
introduces a sweeping definition of "terrorism" offenses, for which stiffer
penalties are applicable.

   

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