According to Human Right Watch:
19 people imprisoned for 10 years; the fairness of the trial considered
Morocco’s highest court is examining the case of 19 Sahrawis imprisoned since 2010 following violent clashes with police, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said on November 8. The verdict is expected on November 25. The men are serving sentences ranging from 20 years’ imprisonment to life imprisonment, handed down after trials marred by allegations of torture.
The Court of Cassation examined the decision of a lower court on November 4, four days before the 10th anniversary of the facts at the origin of this case: the dismantling by the Moroccan security forces of a camp of demonstrators in Gdeim Izik , near El Ayoun, in Western Sahara controlled by Morocco. The defendants were found guilty, first by a military court in 2013, then by a civil appeals court in 2017, of the deaths of 11 members of the Moroccan security forces who were killed in clashes following the dismantling of the camp. These verdicts were largely based on confessions that the defendants refuted.
“The Court of Cassation is the last resort to get Gdeim Izik’s trial back on track,” said Eric Goldstein, acting director of the North Africa and Middle East division at Human Rights Watch. “Everyone involved – the accused, the killed police officers and their families – have a right to real justice, based on and seen to be a fair trial. ”
On November 8, 2010, Moroccan security forces dismantled the Gdeim Izik encampment, which included around 6,500 tents set up by Sahrawis a month earlier to protest against poor socio-economic conditions in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara. . During the violent clashes that then took place in this camp and in El Ayoun, not far from there, 11 members of the security forces were killed: some of them were run over by cars and others killed. with handcrafted daggers and sabers. The written account of the 2017 judgment indicates that at least one law enforcement officer was slaughtered.
Moroccan security forces repeatedly beat and ill-treated people arrested immediately after the incident. Twenty-five Saharawis were subsequently charged with constitution and participation in a criminal association and with participation or complicity in participating in acts of violence “resulting in premeditated death” against agents of the public forces, among other charges.
One of these men was released in 2011, and in 2013, a military court ordered the release of two others and sentenced the remaining 22 to heavy prison terms; One of the defendants, who fled to Spain, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. The court relied almost entirely to convict them on confessions they had made to the police, or on statements incriminating other defendants, without seriously investigating allegations that the defendants signed these confessions and confessions. statements under torture. They claim in particular to have been severely beaten, some while hanging from the wrists and knees, to have been subjected to sexual abuse, including rape with an object, and that their fingernails have been pulled out. fingers and toes.
Torture, as well as other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, is prohibited by international law and by the Moroccan Constitution. The country’s penal code prohibits torture, and its Code of Criminal Procedure provides that confessions obtained through “violence” or “coercion” are not admissible in court. Yet Moroccan courts have often based their verdicts on confessions without investigating claims that such confessions were obtained through torture or other unlawful forms of coercion.
In 2016, the Court of Cassation overturned the decision rendered by a military court against the defendants of Gdeim Izik on the grounds that this verdict was not based on conclusive evidence. The case has been returned to a civil court for a new trial. Morocco passed a law in 2014 putting an end to the trials of civilians in military courts, but this law was not applied retroactively to the 2013 trial of Gdeim Izik.
In 2017, the Court of Appeal of Salé, near Rabat, the Moroccan capital, declared the 22 men guilty after examining new evidence presented by the prosecution and by family members of law enforcement officers. killed who became civil parties. However, the defense vigorously contested the new evidence presented as well as the late addition of civil parties, and withdrew from the trial to protest “flagrant injustice,” defense lawyers told Human Rights. Watch and Amnesty International.
The Court of Appeals also based its verdict on statements made by the defendants in 2010 to the police, which they said were extorted from them under torture. The court ordered a forensic examination of the defendants who agreed to submit to it, seven years after their questioning. The doctors who carried out these examinations declared that, in view of the time which had elapsed since the events under consideration, the acts of torture could neither be proved nor refuted, and the court admitted these confessions as evidence, and considered admissible them. new evidence submitted to it.
The United Nations Committee against Torture decided in 2016, in the case submitted to it concerning one of the accused, Naâma Asfari, that Morocco had not investigated the allegations of torture and that the military tribunal had been based on statements extracted through torture.
“The courts should have investigated the defendants’ allegations of torture promptly and not after seven years,” said Amna Guellali, deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International. “The proceedings are marred by the lack of such investigations and the admission of inadmissible confessions as evidence. ”
Two of the defendants were sentenced to prison terms they had already served, and released. The remaining 20, including the one who was tried in absentia after fleeing to Spain, were given heavy sentences ranging from 20 years in prison to life imprisonment.
Following the verdict of this civil court, the 19 prisoners, who were until then held in the same prison in Salé, were transferred to different prisons across Morocco. Several of them have since gone on repeated hunger strikes to protest against alleged abuses, including denial of medical care or family visits, and abusive detention at the isolation. They also all requested their transfer to prisons closer to their families in Western Sahara. The prisons where they are currently held are 500 to 1,200 kilometers from El Ayoun, most of them the town they come from and where their families live.
Authorities have repeatedly prevented Claude Mangin, the wife of Naâma Asfari, who is French and lives in France, from visiting him. In November 2019, Claude Mangin was informed by an official document that she was prohibited from entering Morocco because she represented a “threat to public order”. During her visits to the country, she had established contacts with Sahrawi activists for self-determination, and openly expressed her peaceful support for these people.
The Court of Cassation does not review the facts, but only questions of procedure, abuse of power and misapplication of the law. The court, whose decision is expected on November 25, can overturn the verdict, as it did in 2016, and order a new trial. Otherwise, the verdict rendered in 2017 by the Salé Court of Appeal will be considered final, and the defendants can only count on a royal pardon to obtain their release before the end of their sentence.
Most of Western Sahara, which the United Nations says is a non-self-governing territory, has been de facto controlled by Morocco since the country took it from Spain, its former colonial administrator, in 1975. Morocco considers that it is a Moroccan territory, and rejects any vote on self-determination which would include the possibility of independence. This possibility was part of the referendum that Morocco and the Polisario, the Western Sahara liberation movement, accepted with the 1991 UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement. The international community does not recognize the de facto annexation of this territory by Morocco.
The Moroccan authorities systematically prevent gatherings in Western Sahara in favor of self-determination. Morocco hinders the work of some local non-governmental human rights organizations, including harassing their members and blocking the legal registration process, and security forces sometimes beat activists
