Morocco/Western Sahara: Human Rights Defender Jailed For Online Posts
Rida Benotmane is a member of the Moroccan Association for the defence of human rights (AMDH) and a political activist who was already jailed for four years between 2007 and 2011 for online commentaries.
After he was arrested and detained on 9 September 2022, he went on hunger strike for over 2 weeks in protest of his detention. According to his lawyer, Rida Benotmane is only permitted to call his lawyers and family for a few minutes once per week. He is permitted family visits every 15 days, where they can speak for a maximum of 15 minutes, through a window and surrounded by guards. He is allowed out of his cell only once per day, for a walk of one hour, alone, in a space of 10m2.
Moroccan authorities have increasingly targeted dissenting voices in recent months. In April 2022, Saida el Alami, a human rights defender and member of the “Femmes Marocaines Contre la Detention Politique” collective, was sentenced to two years in prison for posting about her ill-treatment by the police and for criticizing the repression of journalists and activists. Her sentence was increased in September 2022 in her appeals trial to three years. Blogger, Rabie al-Ablaq was also sentenced in the same month to four years in prison for offending the King in two videos posted on social media. In August 2022, blogger and social media activist Fatima Karim was sentenced to two years in prison and a fine for Facebook posts in which she made satirical comments about the Qur'an. She has been held in solitary confinement since her arrest on 15 July and is not permitted to associate with fellow prisoners.
The right to freedom of expression, as stated in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Morocco is a state party, includes the right to impart information through any media and regardless of frontiers. The Moroccan Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression in Chapter 25, which states that freedom of thought and expression is guaranteed in all its forms.
On 7 November, a judge in the first instance court of Rabat sentenced arbitrarily detained human rights defender Rida Benotmane to three-years in prison and a 20,000MAD (around 1900 EUR) fine for “insulting a body regulated by law”, “insulting public officials while carrying out their duties”, and “broadcasting and distributing false allegations without consent” under articles 265, 263, and 447-2 of the Penal Code respectively. His lawyer plans to appeal.