URGENT ACTION

IMPRISONED ACADEMIC’S LIFE IN DANGER
On 4 March, Moroccan academic and human rights defender Maati Monjib started a hunger strike, despite suffering a chronic heart condition and diabetes, to protest his detention and his sentencing in absentia to one year in prison in two separate cases brought against him in relation to the exercise of his freedoms of expression and association, following years of unlawful digital surveillance and judicial harassment. On 27 January, Maati Monjib was unjustly sentenced for an earlier case to one year in prison and a fine of 10,000 dirhams without undergoing a hearing or receiving a summons or any notifications to his defence team to allow for a fair and proper trial.

TAKE ACTION: WRITE AN APPEAL IN YOUR OWN WORDS OR USE THIS MODEL LETTER

Head of Government Saad Dine El-Othmani
Palais Royal Touarga, Rabat 10070, Morocco
                                                                    Fax: +212 53 7771010
                                                                     Twitter: @ChefGov_ma

Your Excellency,

I am writing to express extreme concern about the deteriorating health of academic and human rights defender Maati Monjib and demand his immediate and unconditional release. Maati Monjib started an open hunger strike on 4 March to protest his arbitrary arrest on 29 December 2020 and his sentencing in absentia to one year in prison on 27 January 2021. Maati Monjib suffers a chronic heart condition and diabetes that put his life in serious danger if his hunger strike persists for longer. On 16 March, Maati Monjib had to be transferred to the prison’s health clinic after he fainted from the impact of the hunger strike. He has also visibly lost a lot of weight in a short period of time, according to his lawyer.

Maati Monjib was arbitrarily arrested from a restaurant in Rabat, on 29 December 2020, after being under a new investigation since 7 October 2020 on trumped up charges of money laundering and embezzlement against him and members of his family. While he was in pretrial detention, and without prior notification to him or his lawyers about the court hearing, the First Instance Court in Rabat sentenced him in absentia to one year in prison for a case dating back to 2015.

The Moroccan authorities had in 2015 brought bogus charges against Maati Monjib and six other defendants for their receipt of foreign funds from the non-governmental organization Free Press Unlimited to conduct training sessions for StoryMaker, a secure storytelling app for citizen journalists. The case remained open without a final judgement for five years during which Maati Monjib was summoned more than 20 times and the trial automatically adjourned over the years. It was not until Maati was arrested and held in pre-trial detention for the 2020 case, that a final judgement on the 2015 case was posted on the court’s website in January 2021. There was no notification to his legal team of any hearing sessions to accord Maati Monjib the right to defence in line with fair trial standards.

I therefore ask you to immediately and unconditionally release Maati Monjib, as he is a prisoner of conscience solely detained for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of expression and association. I urge you to drop all charges against him. Pending that, I urge you to provide him with adequate health care necessary to ensure his heart condition is properly monitored and treated. I also urge you to explicitly recognize the legitimacy of human rights defenders and publicly support their work, acknowledging their contribution to the advancement of human rights and to end the criminalization of their receipt of foreign funds to pursue their human rights work.

Yours sincerely,
Additional information

In a statement that Maati Monjib sent out of prison through his lawyers on 4 March, he stated three major drivers behind his hunger strike. He wrote: “I begin a hunger strike starting Thursday, March 4, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. to express a distress call to public opinion following the persecution and injustice inflicted on me by the Moroccan political regime. I observe this hunger strike to protest: 1) My arbitrary arrest on 29 December 2020, 24 hours before the hearing was held in the most secret in the 2015 trial for "undermining the security of the state". A hearing that I wasn't summoned to. My defense was not informed. This trial was postponed until my arrest and ended up convicting me in absentia."

In this statement, Maati Monjib also mentions the defamation against him in "official media and those affiliated to the security services" which infringe his dignity and the presumption of innocence. He continued, "I declare to the national and international public opinion that I am completely innocent of the spurious accusations which seek to undermine my credibility as a journalist and opinion writer. The reason for all this persecution can be found in my writings critical of the regime and its political police and in my human rights defense activities such as my support for the detainees of the Hirak el Rif movement and the journalists unfairly detained under the guise of common law crimes.”
In 2015, Maati Monjib went on hunger strike for 24 days when he was banned from travelling to Spain where he was scheduled to give a talk at a conference about Arab media in transition. His health deteriorated significantly during the hunger strike and he was hospitalized after losing consciousness. The authorities subsequently lifted the travel ban on 29 October 2015.
Maati Monjib and six other activists were investigated in 2015 under accusations of “threatening the internal security of the state” through “propaganda” that may threaten “the loyalty that citizens owe to the State and institutions of the Moroccan people” under Article 206 of the Penal Code. In the 2015 case against Maati Monjib and his six co-defendants, the police interrogation revolved around their receipt of foreign funds from the NGO Free Press Unlimited to conduct training sessions around the technique of StoryMaker, a secure storytelling app developed by Free Press Unlimited (FPU), the Guardian Project and Small World News, which enables citizen journalists to publish content anonymously if they wish to.
According to Maati Monjib, his trial sessions usually last four or five minutes before the judge adjourns and announces the next hearing date. It has been postponed 21 time since 2015. In a letter sent to Amnesty International, the government mentioned that the reasons for the new 2020 investigation is deriving from the annual reports of 2015 and 2016 of Free Press Unlimited, which suggests that this new investigation is linked to the old case of 2015 about the receipt of foreign funding from that NGO to conduct training workshops for citizen journalists. These charges are related to legitimate activities that are protected under the right to association.
Under international human rights law, the right to freedom of association includes NGOs’ capacity to engage in fundraising activities and to seek, receive and utilise resources from national, foreign and international sources. Restrictions on foreign funding that impede the ability of associations to pursue their statutory activities constitute an undue interference with Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Morocco is a party.
Maati Monjib is a prominent academic and human rights defender. He is a regular commentator on Moroccan politics in international media, think tanks and academic forums where he often shared opinions and analysis about the Moroccan authorities' infringement of human rights.
PREFERRED LANGUAGE TO ADDRESS TARGET: Arabic, French, English
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PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 14 May 2021 
Please check with the Amnesty office in your country if you wish to send appeals after the deadline.

NAME AND PRONOUN: Maati Monjib (He/ His)

LINK TO PREVIOUS UA: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde29/3481/2021/en/

And copies to:

His Excellency Mr Abdesselam Aboudrar  
Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco
49 Queens Gate Gardens SW7 5NE
0207 581 5001-4,
Fax 0207 225 38 62
ambalondres@maec.gov.ma 
www.morocanembassylondon.org.uk