The Moroccan lawyer and former Minister of Human Rights, Mohamed Ziane, was sentenced on February 23 to three years in prison. The Ministry of the Interior filed a complaint against him. Aged 79, the former president of Rabat will not be imprisoned, having appealed and appearing free.
Mohamed Ziane, 79, a senior civil servant, had become critical of the authorities, in particular the intelligence services. Founder of the Moroccan Liberal Party, he is prosecuted for eleven counts, including those of “contempt of public officials and justice”, “insult against a constituted body”, “defamation”, “adultery” or ” sexual harassment”.
The former president of Rabat accused the security services in November 2020 of having “rigged” a video to present in a compromising way an interview between him and a married client in a hotel room. The ex-minister denounced a “political trial”.
The video was broadcast on a Moroccan web tv, which caused a stir on social networks. At the time, the lawyer accused the boss of the police and internal intelligence, Abdelatif Hammouchi, of being responsible for the “tampering” of the images.
In response to these accusations, the Ministry of the Interior filed a complaint in January 2021 “based on concrete material facts, through which state institutions have been offended via the dissemination of false accusations and allegations. , punishable by the Penal Code”, according to an official press release.
“The Rabat court of the first instance sentenced Mr. Ziane to three years in prison and a fine of 5,000 dirhams (470 euros),” his lawyer Amal Khalfi told AFP.
However, the former minister will not be imprisoned “since he appeared free and he is going to appeal,” said Maître Khalfi.
“We do not yet have the details of the verdict. We do not know what the charges are” against him, she added.
Mohamed Ziane was Minister of Human Rights between 1995 and 1996.
Close to circles of power, he was also the government’s lawyer in the 1990s. In recent years, he has become famous for his outspokenness towards the Moroccan security apparatus.
