The Inhuman Character of the Moroccan Tyranny Denounced in HRW Report on Western Sahara
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
January 09, 2009
The Report ("Human Rights in Western Sahara and in the Tindouf Refugee Camps" - http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/19/human-rights-western-sahara-and-tindouf-refugee-camps-0) was released on December 19, 2008. In the present article, I republish the second unit of the main part (namely the ´Human Rights in Western Sahara´) of the comprehensive (216-page) HRW Report, In forthcoming articles, I will complete the republication of the Report.
Human Rights in Western Sahara (Part II)
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/77259/section/9
Complaints of Torture, Beatings, and Arbitrary Arrests of Sahrawi Activists
Morocco ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1993. In 2006 it took the positive step of lifting its reservation to Article 20 of that Convention, thereby recognizing the competence of the Committee against Torture to open an investigation when it "receives reliable information which appears to it to contain well-founded indications that torture is being systematically practiced" in its territory. Morocco recognized at the same time the competence of the Committee against Torture, under Article 22 of the Convention, to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals who claim to be victims of a violation of the convention.
Also in 2006, Morocco promulgated amendments to its Penal Code prohibiting torture and bringing the code's definition of torture closer to the one found in the Convention against Torture. The code, as revised, refers to:
any act that causes severe physical or mental pain or suffering intentionally inflicted by a public agent or upon his instigation or with his express or tacit consent, upon a person for the purpose of intimidating or pressuring him or for pressuring a third person, to obtain information or a confession, to punish him for an act that he or a third party committed or is suspected of having committed, or when such pain or suffering is inflicted for any other objective based on any form of discrimination.[125]
Despite these legislative measures, torture persists in Morocco in part because of a lack of political will to eradicate it.
This report contains the testimony of ten Sahrawis whom Human Rights Watch interviewed directly and individually and who described acts of torture or sustained beatings that they experienced at the hands of the police. All ten individuals were in custody at the time of the mistreatment; their cases are distinct from those where the police may have used excessive force in the course of dispersing demonstrations.
With respect to impunity, Human Rights Watch's investigation into these ten and numerous other cases indicates that despite evidence of torture and serious mistreatment, including badly bruised detainees who appear before prosecutors and investigating judges and who demand a medical examination in vain, and the many detailed complaints submitted in writing by alleged victims to offices of the prosecutor, Moroccan officials do not fulfill their legal obligation to investigate this evidence and hold the perpetrators responsible.
When asked about accountability for abuse, Moroccan authorities repeatedly cite the case of two police officers who served two years in prison for beating Hamdi Lembarki, a Sahrawi man, to death on an El-Ayoun street in October 2005. Outside of this case, we found no evidence that the many formal complaints lodged by Sahrawis of physical abuse by the police triggered a serious investigation, much less punishment of those found to be responsible. Justice Minister Abdelouahed Radi denied the existence of such evidence to a reporter:
We never received any complaints from the persons concerned. Regarding torture or illegal arrests, you have to have people who file a complaint. I don't wish to imply that there have never been any missteps, but these are isolated cases. We always react with strictness when the facts are proven. Those responsible for illegal acts have even received heavy sentences.[126]
The secretary general of the Justice Ministry, Mohamed Ledidi, said that Morocco's judiciary conducts serious and "honest" investigations in response to civilian complaints. When asked if the investigations included direct contact with the plaintiff, he responded that this depended on the case. "There are instances where the written complaint contains all the information that is needed [from the plaintiff], and it is not necessary for the prosecutor's office to contact him." Ledidi added that the prosecutor's office informs the plaintiff of the outcome of the investigation.[127]
The governor (wali) of El-Ayoun-Boujdour, M'hamed Drif, said in November 2007 that since he assumed that post a year earlier, he had heard of no cases of the police inflicting injuries on Sahrawis when they intervened in unauthorized demonstrations.[128]
The evidence presented in this report contradicts the claims made by Minister Radi, Secretary-General Ledidi, and Governor Drif. In the city of El-Ayoun alone, 12 Sahrawis who alleged that they were victims of torture, physical abuse, arbitrary arrests, and police harassment between 2005 and 2007 showed us copies of the complaints they submitted to the office of the prosecutor, with the complaints stamped as having been received. Of the 12, only one, Hamoud Iguilid, reported that authorities had contacted him as part of an investigation triggered by his complaint, and two others, Brahim Al-Ansari and Dahha Rahmouni, reported that authorities contacted them only to tell them that they had closed their files for lack of evidence. As far as we are able to determine, not one of the other nine complaints led to a follow-up contact with the person making the complaint, much less a finding of police misconduct. In another case, the prosecutor summoned Aminatou Haidar to give testimony as part of an investigation into her complaint that the police beat her on June 17, 2005, but she stated that she was never informed of the outcome of that investigation (see above).
Moroccan authorities informed Human Rights Watch of the disposition of seven complaints: they dismissed six for lack of evidence; the seventh, they said, was still pending. In four of the dismissed cases, they accused the complainants of deliberately spreading false information in order to undermine the ability of the police to carry out their duties (see Appendix 2 to this report).
What constitutes a proper investigation in cases where the main available evidence is the word of the complainant against the word of the police? In such cases, a search for the truth should include summoning complainants for face-to-face interviews, to determine the credibility of their testimony and to invite them to provide other evidence that may corroborate their claims. Ordinary citizens who fill out and submit written complaints may have evidence at their disposal that, unbeknownst to them, is relevant to the investigation.
This report describes three prevalent types of violence committed by police against Sahrawi activists and suspected activists: violence that police inflict during the interrogation of suspects in custody, violence against persons in their custody as punishment for alleged participation in illegal street demonstrations, and excessive force used to disperse illegal demonstrations. Some of the cases meet the definition of torture under Moroccan and international law; others amount to inhumane and degrading treatment, also forbidden by the Convention against Torture. The cases are presented below, except for one case of alleged torture, that of Naâma Asfari, which is discussed above in the "Right to a Fair Trial" section.
In the city of El-Ayoun, the alleged victims of police abuse readily named individual policemen who, they said, took part in abusing them. They identified them in their testimonies to human rights organizations and in the written complaints they turned in to the office of the prosecutor. It appears that a small unit of officers is assigned to handle Sahrawi protest and unrest in the city of El-Ayoun and is personally involved in putting down street protests and carrying out arrests and interrogations. The names of officers cited most frequently in incidents of alleged abuse are: Ichi abou el-Hassan, Moustapha Kamouri, and Aziz Annouche "et-Touheimeh" (known by this nickname, which refers to a birthmark on his face). It is not known which, if any, of these names are pseudonyms.
The testimonies of Sahrawi residents of El-Ayoun who named these officers are sufficiently numerous and consistent to give credibility to the allegation that these individual policemen are chronic abusers. Since the incidents described in this report, authorities reportedly transferred abou al-Hassan to Benslimane and Kammouri to Tantan. Annouche reportedly continues to serve in El-Ayoun. We have no information suggesting that any of them was disciplined in connection with these complaints. When Human Rights Watch presented to Moroccan authorities a sample of citizen complaints naming these officers, the authorities dismissed these complaints in their entirety (see Appendix 2).
Case Studies
Several youths, both in El-Ayoun and in Smara, provided testimony about the police detaining them, driving them to an isolated location, and then beating them as a form of "summary punishment" for their suspected participation in street protests in favor of Sahrawi self-determination.
El-Mehdi Ez-Zai'ar
El-Mehdi ez-Zai'ar, a twenty year-old resident of Haï al-Qasm in El-Ayoun, describes what happened to him on January 22, 2007:
At about eight o'clock in the evening, I was walking in Haï Katalonia [the "Catalonia" neighborhood] with a friend. A large police van stopped and a policeman dressed in civilian clothes stopped me and asked my name. Then he and a group of policemen in plainclothes put us in a car and blindfolded and handcuffed us. He asked me who had given me [Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic] flags and pamphlets, even though I wasn't carrying any. I said I didn't have anything to do with anything like that, and they started beating me.
The police drove me to Oued es-Saguia [a wadi, or dry riverbed, in the desert outside the city]. They took off my clothes, poured cold water on my body, and hit me with clubs. They asked again where I had gotten flags and pamphlets. I said I had nothing to do with flags or pamphlets. They threatened to rape me with their batons. I tried to keep them off me but I was in handcuffs and could not keep them from poking me with their club. One of them took out a knife and threatened to cut off my genitals, saying, "If you hand out any pamphlets, I will cut it off." One of them also took out a lighter and made as if he was going to burn the end of my penis. They also threatened to dig me a grave then and there.
Then they said that if I worked for them they would give me money and a mobile phone. When I refused, they clubbed me again. This went on until about 11 p.m. Then one of them got a phone call, and when the call finished, they stopped beating me, had me get dressed again and transported me to the police station on November 24 Street. They photographed me and asked me more questions.
I slept at the station that night. In the morning they questioned me some more: "Where are you getting these flags and pamphlets? Is there anybody in your family from the Polisario?" I told them, "I don't have any relatives in the Polisario." They released me at about one in the afternoon.
I recognized one of the ones who arrested me. He was tall and beefy, with a mustache, but I didn't know his name. During the interrogation, I recognized [officers] Behri and Aziz "et-Touheimeh."
Ez-Zai'ar showed us the report of a medical examination conducted by a doctor at a state hospital on January 24, 2007, the day after his release from custody.[129] It notes multiple bruises on the back of his shoulders and thighs and on his right wrist, swelling on the side of his neck and on the back of his head, and scratches all along both legs.
Ez-Zai'ar submitted a complaint to the prosecutor's office in El-Ayoun, detailing what happened to him and asking for an investigation. (The date of the complaint is illegible.) Assistant prosecutor Abdennasser Barzali told Human Rights Watch that they closed ez-Zai'ar's complaint on April 9, 2007 due to "lack of evidence."[130] Ez-Zai'ar told us that after submitting his complaint, authorities never contacted him about it, neither to solicit further testimony or other evidence, nor to inform him that they were closing the file.[131]
Omar Chtouki
Chtouki, a resident of El-Ayoun born in 1991, describes what happened to him during two run-ins with the police in 2007.
On February 18, we were organizing a sit-in near Bou Kraa Street near Zaouiyat ech-Cheikh. After about 10 minutes, the police came in to break it up. They arrested four of us and drove us to Oued es-Saguia, near the dam. They took off our clothes and stuck my head under the water and said, "If you don't cut it out with your demonstrations, you're going to die in the water here." Then they laid us down on top of stones. They blindfolded and handcuffed us and dragged us over the stones. Then they made a circle around us and hit us with their clubs. They took turns hitting us. We were lying like that for six or eight hours. It was close to midnight when they finally drove us to the police station on November 24 Street.
At the station they hooked us up to the "airplane."[132] They hit me with a cable, and kept asking, "Who is behind this? Who put you up to this?" We answered that nobody put us up to it. After they finished, they asked, "So what are you going to do to solve this headache? If you want, you can work with us. If you refuse, you can leave for Spain. But if you don't cut it out with the demonstrations, the next time we catch you at one, we're going to rape you."
Chtouki told Human Rights Watch that the police eventually took him down from the "airplane," photographed, fingerprinted, and discharged him after holding him at the station for about 24 hours. Two months later, the police stopped him again:
On April 7, when I left my house, a police car followed me and cornered me near a mosque. Among the officers there was Moustapha Kamouri, Aziz "et-Touheimeh," and Ichi abou el-Hassan. They were wearing plainclothes. They asked my name, and said to me, "We detained you in February."
I answered, "Yes, I was held after the demonstration at Zaouiyat ech-Cheikh." While they were talking with me, other police arrived in their cars and got out and came to where we were standing. Some of the police slapped me, then one named Hosni kicked me in the lower leg and broke it. When I fell, another one hit me with his club. Then they got back in their cars and left.
My friends took me home, and then we went to Hassan ibn Mehdi Hospital. My mother was with me at the hospital. We were there for hours without getting any treatment. They didn't even clean the blood off me. A nurse asked me what had happened, and asked whether I had been in a demonstration. But no doctor came. My father came and bribed the nurse, and they finally agreed to register me as a case unrelated to "the events." They put my leg in a cast, and I remained at the hospital for three days.[133]
Chtouki's father, Lahoussine Chtouki, of El-Ayoun, filed complaints with the prosecutor's office following each incident. The El-Ayoun Appeals Court stamped the complaints upon receiving them asش07/35 on February 21, 2007 and asش 7/61 dated April 25, 2007.
The Moroccan government provided Human Rights Watch the following information about action taken on Chtouki's first complaint:
An investigation into this matter determined that the plaintiff's claim is baseless. He claims to have been on Idris I Street, which is known to be a busy thoroughfare, where there obviously would have been eyewitnesses to the incident. Furthermore, his name does not appear on the official register of those being held in garde à vue detention, and his claim is not supported by witnesses. These considerations prompted the public prosecutor to close the case for a lack of evidence. The plaintiff has been notified of this decision.
Lahoussine Chtouki told us that neither he nor his son was aware of any follow-up to the two complaints he submitted. The prosecutor's office did not contact either of them as part of the investigation or notify them of the outcome of their complaints, he said.[134]
The following two cases involve the police allegedly abducting youths in the city of Smara and taking them to remote places for a summary beating, similar to what el-Mehdi ez-Zai'ar and Omar Chtouki reported experiencing in El-Ayoun.
Nifa' Akhtour
Nifa' Akhtour, a 17-year-old high school student in Smara, described what happened when the police seized him as he tried to flee a political demonstration organized by youths in Smara on October 2, 2007:
The policeman who grabbed me put me in a big blue car. I was by myself with six or seven policemen in plainclothes. They blindfolded and handcuffed me and put me on the floor of the car, face-up. They did not ask me anything; they just started beating me on my knees and elbows.
The car stopped. When they removed my blindfold, I saw we had arrived at Oued Silouan. For about one and-a-half hours, I stayed in the car. They did not ask me any questions. Then they started to beat me again, for about 15 minutes. I recognized the policemen but don't know their names. They took my cellphone and then left me there. I started walking until I found some people who were drinking tea. I made my way back to Smara, which was about 6 kilometers away.
Akhtour said the beating did not result in broken bones. He never filed a formal complaint about the incident.[135]
Kamal Dhlimi
Kamal Dhlimi, a 17-year-old from the Tantan neighborhood of Smara, told Human Rights Watch that one day in early October 2007, as he was leaving the Masira middle school where he is a student, around 2:00 or 2:30pm, policemen in uniform confronted him and asked his name. When Dhlimi identified himself, they escorted him to a large vehicle nearby, which had six or seven men inside. They had him board the car and then handcuffed him from behind and blindfolded him, he said. Dhlimi recalls:
They already knew me from the intifada.[136] They drove for a while and then had me get out of the car. We were in an industrial zone, where no one could see us. They asked me if I had participated in the intifada, and insulted me. They asked who was organizing the protests and where the Polisario flags came from. They grabbed my hair and threatened to break my leg if I did not answer the way they wanted. They hit me on the shoulder, face, and back, both with their fists and with a baton. This went on for 35 or 45 minutes. Then they removed the handcuffs and left me there while they drove away.[137]
Ngilla el-Hawasi and Zahra Amidane
Ngilla el-Hawasi and Zahra Amidane, residents of El-Ayoun born in 1991 and 1993 respectively, described their mistreatment at the hands of the police after they participated in a demonstration in 2007 at which a foreign photojournalist was taking pictures. El-Hawasi said:
It was February 21, around 9:30 pm. There was a demonstration on Skekeina Street, with about 30 demonstrators, all of us teens and children. A Swedish journalist [Lars Björk; see below, section on Press Freedom] showed up. We held up Polisario flags and banners with slogans. Just after we started our chanting, the police came. One police car went after the journalist. The other cars pursued the teenagers. The police were in civilian clothes. Ichi abou el-Hassan and the group of Moustapha Kamouri were there in cars. They caught nine of the demonstrators and brought us to the police station. It was all boys except for me and one another girl.
When we arrived, the policemen were shouting and threatening us. The police were divided into groups: one headed by Aziz "et-Touheimeh," another by Ichi abou el-Hassan, and a third by Moustapha Kamouri. I was in the last group. They put me on a room where the policemen held my hands and feet while Kamouri beat me with a water hose.
While he hit me, they asked me over and over, "Who brought this journalist?" They pushed my face into the metal cabinets until I was bleeding and half-conscious. Then one by the name of Rabi' [presumably officer Abdelhak Rabi'] from the DST [the Direction de la Sécurité Territoriale, one of Morocco's security agencies] came in and said, "It's not the first time you're here," and he hit me in the mouth, cutting my lip.
Then they brought me into the office of Aziz "et-Touheimeh" and asked if it was I who started the demonstration. They said they had detained the journalist, and from his camera they could tell who the participants were. They asked us if we had brought the journalist, but we said no. Then they asked if it was a Sahrawi human rights activist who had brought him. We answered no. They asked us who had given us the [Polisario] flags. They showed us pictures of other demonstrators and asked us if we knew where they lived. When we said no, they became more aggressive. They took us to a room that was dirty and removed clothes of the boys, leaving them only in their shorts, with no carpet on the floor. They left the girls in the same room with the boys.
They had taken us to the police station at around 10pm. The interrogators finished with us at around midnight. When it was time for them to leave, they told the soldier at the front door to leave the lights on. They left us on the floor. They wouldn't let us kneel or become comfortable, even though we were all bruised and in pain, and the boys were very cold.
In the morning they took us girls for more questioning. They hit us with their shoes, saying, "If you don't give us names, we won't let you out." We couldn't see the boys, but heard them crying, and the police shouting, "Names!" They didn't let kids go to the bathrooms, so they peed. The police gave them pieces of cardboard to clean the floor with. They took the girls into another room where there were a lot of bikes, motorbikes, and junk, and told us to clean it up. So we did.
When they saw we wouldn't give names, they called our families. When our families came, they gathered them in one room and told them that the activists were filling our minds with rubbish. They told our parents to keep an eye on us, and then they let us all go, at about three in the afternoon.[138]
Zahra Amidane recalled about the same course of events:
A woman came to the demonstration and told us to run because the police were coming .… But they caught up with me and clubbed me on the leg. I fell on my face. They dragged me into the police car and demanded to know my name. I gave them a fake name, "Ferri." They took me to the station of the judicial police.
The one in charge of the questioning was Aziz "et-Touheimeh". He asked me, "What were you doing in the street? What were you doing with the foreign photographer?" They said they had seen me carrying Sahrawi flag in the pictures. They blindfolded me and brought me into a room with no lights. They handcuffed me and bound my wrists to my feet. "Et-Touheimeh" hit me with a club all over my body. They took me out of that room and put me and another girl in a room with a bunch of boys.
My family came and asked about me, using my real name. The police answered that they had a girl named "Ferri" …. When they found out [that I had given them a false name], Aziz grabbed me by my hair and smacked my head against the wall. Then they photographed me and let me go.[139]
Repeated Arrests of Activist Hassan Duihi for "Traffic Violations"
Hassan Duihi, a resident of El-Ayoun born in 1964, works in the Ministry of Education. He describes himself as a human rights activist who does not belong to any organization but who often receives foreign visitors interested in human rights. His regular visitors include the France-based Sahrawi activist Naâma Asfari (see above, "Right to a Fair Trial" section) and Italian magistrate Nicola Quatrano, a frequent observer of trials of Sahrawis.
During 2007, police arrested Duihi three times on the grounds that the papers for his car were not in order. But the overall context of these arrests – including the beating and interrogations he underwent while in police custody – indicate that the automobile violations were a pretext for harassing a human rights activist.
On May 20, 2007 police arrested Duihi while he was driving his Fiat Uno in El-Ayoun in the company of fellow human rights activist Brahim Al-Ansari (whom the police targeted separately for harassment at other times; see below). Duihi recalls:
They arrested us on the pretext that the papers for the car were not in order. They brought us to a police station and held us there for nearly eight hours. The judicial police asked us questions about our relations with human rights activists and with international observers who were coming to observe trials. They asked me about my relationship with Naâma Asfari and Claude Mangin [Asfari's wife, also a pro-Sahrawi activist]. I told the police, "They're my friends; whenever they come to El-Ayoun I see them."
The police just asked questions; they did not threaten or touch us. At the end we signed a statement saying that we were driving without having the car's papers on board.[140]
Duihi filed a complaint with the prosecutor on August 9, in which he named officer Abdelaziz Annouche "et-Tuheimeh" as the one who questioned him. The complaint notes that the police impounded Duihi's car for four days after his detention for reasons he did not know.
Duihi told us that on August 3, 2007, the traffic police stopped him again while he was driving in El-Ayoun and confiscated his car and its papers even though, he claimed, his papers were complete and in order. He got the car back six days later, after paying a fine for a violation he said he did not commit.
Duihi's third encounter with the police was more serious. On August 22, 2007, at about 1pm, police in uniform stopped him while he was driving in El-Ayoun, took his car and brought him to the November 24 police station. According to Duihi:
The police took me to an office where they made me remove my clothes, took photographs of me and threatened to put them on the Internet. They blindfolded me and questioned me for about one hour, asking about my relations with Naâma Asfari, international observers, and with the ASVDH [Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations]. They slapped me several times on my face and kicked me on my bottom and my knees. After that, they left me standing in an office, blindfolded, all night long. The next day they said, "If you want to leave you have to sign this." When they removed my blindfold I discovered that they had smashed my glasses. I signed the statement but had no idea what I was signing. After that they let me go. It was about 4:40pm – almost 28 hours after they had arrested me.
Duihi recounted all three of these incidents in two written complaints he submitted to the prosecutor. The first is the above-mentioned one dated August 9, 2007. When he submitted it, the prosecutor's office refused to stamp it as received, Duihi said, so he mailed it instead. The prosecutor's office stamped his second complaint on August 27, 2007.
In response to a query from Human Rights Watch about the latter complaint, the Moroccan government stated:
A thorough investigation into the matter determined that the plaintiff is a reckless driver who continually attracts the attention of traffic officers for committing traffic infractions. The police filed reports on these violations and [the plaintiff's] car was impounded in the municipal pound, as befits the type of infraction he committed.
In regard to his arrest, this claim is unfounded and has no basis in fact or in the law. The prosecutor decided to dismiss this claim due to a lack of evidence. The plaintiff was notified of this decision.
Duihi, contacted on June 1, 2008, said he never heard anything from authorities after submitting his complaints: no one contacted him for additional information or informed him of the results of any investigation.[141] He added that he still had no idea about the contents of the statement he signed in the police station on August 23, 2007.[142]
Duihi said also that he had attracted police attention as someone who had urged a boycott of Moroccan legislative elections held on September 7, 2007. He said that in the days before the vote, police were stationed outside his house and, on the afternoon of September 4, police, led by officer Abdelaziz Annouche, conducted a search of his house when his wife and children were there but he was absent. Duihi told us that the police presented no search warrant or other document authorizing the search. They frightened his wife and children, he said, but did not break or take anything.
Duihi filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office in El-Ayoun, requesting that he investigate the September 4 police search of his home, but never heard anything back about this request. The request was dated September 6, 2007 and was stamped as received the same day and given the case number of ام ق07/43.
Arrests of Human Rights Activist Hamoud Iguilid
Hamoud Iguilid, an El-Ayoun resident who is president of the El-Ayoun–Sahara section of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (Association Marocaine des Droits Humains, AMDH), one of the oldest and best-established national human rights organizations, has been frequently detained arbitrarily but never charged. The focus of police questioning when they have held Iguilid showed that these detentions were prompted by his human rights activism.
Iguilid told us that on May 10, 2008 at about 8pm, police intercepted him on an El-Ayoun street, put him in a police wagon and handcuffed and blindfolded him. He said that the police held him in the wagon for 75 minutes, insulted him, and questioned him about the AMDH's activities and the El-Ayoun–Sahara section's involvement in May Day activities alongside union activists. The police searched him and confiscated from him about 700 dirhams (US $98), a written complaint by an alleged victim of human rights abuse, and a USB flash drive containing information related to the AMDH. They then removed the handcuffs and blindfold and released him on a road beyond the city limits.
Iguilid filed a complaint with the prosecutor and also sent copies to the ministries of interior and justice. The judicial police in El-Ayoun summoned him and took his oral testimony on May 15 about the incident. Reached by telephone on July 16, 2008, Iguilid said the authorities had not yet contacted him about the results of the investigation or returned to him any of the items the police had confiscated.
The police also arrested Iguilid on March 18, 2006, two days before the arrival of King Mohamed VI in El-Ayoun. They held him for several hours and then released him without charge, after the AMDH central bureau protested his detention. However police warned him to remain at home for the next two days and stationed police agents nearby, Iguilid said.[143]
In a 2005 incident, police arrested Iguilid at about 3 a.m. on May 27, the morning after the AMDH El-Ayoun-Sahara section had issued a report, under Iguilid's signature, alleging police abuses in response to the Sahrawi "intifada" that had been raging in El-Ayoun for several days.[144] The police released Iguilid without charge at 7 p.m. that day, he said. In a letter dated July 25, 2005, the Ministry of Justice told Amnesty International that police arrested Iguilid for being drunk in public.[145] Iguilid denied the accusation, explaining, "The Moroccan state has always used drunkenness and drugs as a pretext to arrest human rights and trade union activists."[146] Shortly before his arrest, Iguilid had given media interviews about human rights abuses committed by the security forces against demonstrators; he continued to do so after his release.
Police Detain and Beat Activists Brahim Al-Ansari and Dahha Rahmouni
Brahim Al-Ansari, 39, is a member of the El-Ayoun chapter of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) and of en-Nahj ed-Dimuqrati, the only legally recognized political party in Morocco that favors Sahrawi self-determination. Dahha Rahmouni, 40, is a member of the executive committee of the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations (ASVDH).
According to Al-Ansari, the police arrested the two men at 10 p.m. on December 14, 2007 while they were in Rahmouni's car on Smara Road in El-Ayoun. Al-Ansari stated that two police cars, one carrying five uniformed policemen and another with three or four plainclothes officers, stopped Rahmouni's car. The police then drove Al-Ansari to a police station near the seat of the provincial government (the Wilaya) in El-Ayoun; they brought Rahmouni to the station separately.
Police questioned Al-Ansari in the police car for an hour before taking him into the station. He said they blindfolded him and took him to a room that, as he later discovered when his blindfold was removed, was an office. In that room, he said, several persons beat and kicked him in the face and on the back for roughly fifteen minutes. They demanded that he provide the personal identification number (PIN) for his mobile phone, which he refused to do.
Al-Ansari then learned that Rahmouni was also in the room and was having trouble breathing. Both men explained to the police present that Rahmouni had a medical condition, and requested that his family be allowed to bring his medicine. The police denied this request until Sunday, when Mr. Rahmouni paid a police officer to buy medicine, Al-Ansari said. Policemen placed the two men next to each other while insulting them. They were left in the room, still blindfolded, until the following morning, December 15. Guards remained in the room overnight.
In the morning, an officer entered the room and interrogated them about their relationships with human rights organizations and human rights activists. He asked how the men got information from victims, who took the victims' pictures, and to whom the pictures were sent. The officer also accused them of being members of the Polisario Front, which they denied. The interrogation continued until mid-day. In the evening, the officer returned, removed their blindfolds and advised them to stop their activities. They were again left in the same office, under guard, until the following morning (December 16), when the officer entered again and questioned Rahmouni. The two men were given nothing to eat until that day.
On the afternoon of December 16, police officers took Rahmouni to another room. Al-Ansari stated that other officers kept him behind and told him to sign a statement (procès verbal). When Al-Ansari asked to read it, the policemen refused, kicked him in the neck, immobilized him, and forced his finger onto an inkpad and then onto each page of the document.
When Rahmouni was brought back to the same room, Al-Ansari, his blindfold removed, said he saw multiple cuts or contusions on Rahmouni's face and back. The police officer who had conducted their interrogations then told them that the document they had signed would be used against them if they were arrested again.
At around 8 p.m. on December 16, police drove the two men in a green police van and released them on a side street near the stadium in El-Ayoun. On December 18, Al-Ansari and Rahmouni returned, as instructed, to the police station and collected their mobile phones and Rahmouni's car, which had been impounded.
In response to a letter requesting information about the case,[147] the Moroccan embassy in Washington replied to Human Rights Watch on February 21:
Rabat has just informed us that on December 14 2007 at 10:30pm, a police patrol … came upon a Renault 19 that was improperly parked in a dark location. When the police approached, the two passengers in the car refused to disclose their identities, prompting the police to take them to the police station.... The process of identification revealed that the men were Brahim Al-Ansari, who was released immediately, and Dahha Rahmouni, who was being sought pursuant to search warrants 1273, 1270, 808 and 1356 in relation to his suspected role in forming a criminal gang. The royal prosecutor was thus informed, a report was filed, and [Rahmouni] was placed under investigation without being placed in detention.
It should be pointed out that the allegations of Rahmouni and Al-Ansari are part of a strategy designed by the Polisario and the separatists to which these two persons belong. These moves are designed to inflame tensions and present the Kingdom as a "monster" that has no respect for human rights, and to sap the efforts to stimulate and enrich the democratic process in the Kingdom.
These maneuvers are mere provocations, timed to coincide with the third round of negotiations [between Morocco and the Polisario] over the question of the Sahara.
Moreover, the two persons never filed a complaint before the judicial authorities in the city of El-Ayoun, which proves yet again that their main objective was to go to the foreign media with their allegations and to thereby misinform public international opinion.
Dahha Rahmouni is a member of an unrecognized association that is in fact a Polisario agency in the southern provinces that seeks to undermine national unity and Moroccan identity and promote separatism.[148]
Contrary to what this official response states, both men submitted written complaints to the prosecutor in El-Ayoun on January 4, 2008 and provided Human Rights Watch with stamped copies of their complaints to prove it.[149]
Second, the response claims that police detained Rahmouni because of outstanding criminal warrants against him. Yet just two months later, Rahmouni was able to obtain a Ministry of Justice document stating he had a clean judicial record.[150] Authorities, moreover, permitted him to travel abroad shortly before and after his arrest, in September 2007 and then in February 2008.
These facts suggest that the warrants against Rahmouni lacked an evidentiary basis but, rather, were a means to legitimize what would otherwise appear to be an arbitrary arrest. In fact, Sahrawi human rights activists in El-Ayoun informed Human Rights Watch that the police often used these warrants (avis de recherche), which the prosecutor issues, as a means to harass activists by detaining them at will for brief periods, and then releasing them without any formal charges.
Third, the government's response mentioned that Rahmouni belongs to an "unrecognized association." The association in question, the Sahrawi Association of Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations (ASVDH), had followed the proper procedures for registering, but the local administration had refused to issue it a receipt for its application. In September 2006 a court ruled in favor of the ASVDH, saying that the local administration had acted improperly by refusing to receive its application.[151] Thus, the assertion that Rahmouni belongs to an unrecognized association is debatable.
Fourth, contrary to the government's claim that the police released Al-Ansari "immediately" on December 14, Al-Ansari stated that the police held him until December 16. Moreover, the government dismissed all of Rahmouni's and Al-Ansari's allegations as "baseless" but did not explain how it arrived at that conclusion, other than to accuse the two men of fabricating the charges to hurt Morocco's image.
Human Rights Watch raised all of the foregoing issues in a letter dated March 21, 2008 to Morocco's ambassador in Washington, Aziz Mekouar,[152] but never got a response. On May 5, 2008, the police summoned the two men and had them sign a notice informing them that their complaints had been dismissed for lack of evidence. It was, Al-Ansari said, the first contact they had had with authorities in relation to their complaints since they first submitted them on January 4.[153]
Of the many complaints cited in this report that citizens submitted to the office of the prosecutor in El-Ayoun, the Rahmouni–Al-Ansari complaint was the only one where the plaintiffs reported that the authorities had informed them of the outcome of the investigation. But like the rest (with two exceptions, those of Hamoud Iguilid and Aminatou Haidar, see above), the authorities never contacted the plaintiffs as part of their investigation into the complaint.
Mohamed Boutabâa's Complaint that Police Struck Him with Their Car
Mohamed Boutabâa, born in 1970, alleges that on May 17, 2006, police deliberately drove a car into him in the Maâtallah neighborhood, severely injuring him. The incident occurred in the context of pro-independence demonstrations staged on the occasion of a visit to El-Ayoun by a fact-finding delegation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Boutabâa submitted two complaints to the El-Ayoun Appeals Court.[154]
When we met with the assistant prosecutor at El-Ayoun's Court of Appeals, Abdennasser Barzali, on November 7, 2007, he acknowledged receiving both of Boutabâa's complaints and said they were still under review, a year and-a-half after Boutabâa had filed his first complaint.
The response that Moroccan authorities provided in May 2008 to an inquiry from Human Rights Watch stated that the investigation into Boutabâa's complaints determined them to be "specious complaints that aim to prevent public agents from fulfilling their responsibilities to maintain public order. For this reason the public prosecutor decided to close the case for lack of evidence. The plaintiff was informed of the decision on this matter."
Reached by telephone on July 15, 2008, Boutabâa said that since filing his complaints, the authorities had neither summoned him to provide additional information nor informed him that the complaints had been dismissed.
Human Rights Watch did not investigate the incident involving the automobile. However, given Boutabâa's injuries and the gravity of his complaint, the dismissive response by the authorities – who apparently never contacted him for additional information or to inform him of the case being closed – is part of a pattern of investigations that seem little concerned with discovering the truth.
Alleged Torture of El-Houcine Lidri in 2005
We include this older case because of the severity of the alleged torture and because, even though authorities stated at the time that they were investigating the alleged victim's complaint and at least three international human rights organizations submitted inquiries,[155] the complainant reported that authorities never disclosed to him the outcome of any investigation.
El-Houcine Lidri, a high school teacher born in 1970, is a well-known Sahrawi activist and a member today of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA). He also belonged to the Forum for Truth and Justice – Sahara Branch, which authorities dissolved in 2003 (see section below, Freedom of Association for Human Rights Organizations). Lidri was among the many activists whom police arrested during the Sahrawi unrest that erupted in late May 2005. He lives in El-Ayoun.
Lidri said that the police arrested him, along with activists Brahim Noumria and Larbi Messaoud at the home of a fourth Sahrawi activist, Fatma Ayyache, in the Haï Zoumla neighborhood of El-Ayoun, on the morning of July 20, 2005. Lidri had given an interview the night before to Al Jazeera television on the recent arrests in Western Sahara. The police transported the men to the police station on 24 November Street. Lidri describes what happened next:
The police took each of us into separate offices and began asking me routine questions. Then [police commander] Ichi abou el-Hassan came into the room where I was and said, "You are the leader." Then they took me to another room where there was the chief of the judicial police, Omar Qaisi, and the chief of Renseignements Généraux,[156] [Hassan] al-Ghafari.
They asked me one question: "What is your position on the Sahara?" I replied, "The right to self-determination." Al-Ghafari said, "This is bad news. You will see."
The police handcuffed and blindfolded Lidri and drove him to a place that, when he got inside, he guessed from the echo to be a large hangar. Lidri recalled:
Then the investigation began. They asked all kinds of political questions: Who was behind the demonstrations, who was inciting them, about my interview the day before with Al Jazeera, about the relations I had with the Polisario, with NGOs, with Sahrawi human rights activists, and with the disturbances that were happening then in El-Ayoun.
I could recognize some of them by their voices: there was the security chief for the province Brahim Bensami, Ichi abou el-Hassan, Ghaffari, Abdelhak Rabi'.
They started hitting and kicking me. Bensami ordered them to bring a rod. With my hands cuffed and my ankles bound, they ran the pole between my wrists and ankles and then lifted one end so I was tilted and facing down. This put all the weight on my wrists and ankles. They put a chair on my back, in order to push down the chest, making it harder for me to breathe. They burned my wrists with cigarettes. They poured a liquid that burned my hands and inflamed them. At this point, I fainted. They untied me and pulled me up on my feet. Four men forced me to run, as if they wanted me to regain consciousness. They kept asking who was behind the activists.
They put me back in the "poulet rôti" [chicken on a grill] position, until I fainted again. They revived me the same way as before, then hung me "poulet rôti" a third time.
At night, they took me down and put me on a floor without any covering. From the odor and listening to people talking, I figured out that I was at PC CMI.[157]
Lidri says that on the next day, July 21, police subjected him again to sessions of the "poulet rôti" while blindfolded. On July 22, he says they transported him from PC CMI to the Security Wilaya (provincial security headquarters) in El-Ayoun. He continued:
That morning I appeared before the prosecutor. I told him how the police had tortured me and showed him the burns and wounds. He did not respond to what I was saying. He extended my garde à vue detention for one day and sent me back to the central police station.
From there, the police took me back to the PC CMI for three or four hours and tortured me again. This time it was revenge. They said, "Because you spoke to the prosecutor, we're going to do it again."
That night, after I had returned to the police station, they sent me to the hospital. A doctor looked at me but did not do a thorough exam. He touched me here and there, gave me an injection and prescribed some medication.
On July 23, I was brought before the investigating judge, along with [rights activists] Brahim Noumria, Larbi Messaoud, Mohamed el-Moutaouakil, and Fdhili Gaoudi.[158] We were all presented together. It was the first time since my arrest that I saw a lawyer.
Noumria and I requested a medical examination and said we wanted to file a complaint against those who had tortured us. The investigating judge asked, "Who tortured you?" I answered, "Security chief Brahim Bensami." The judge said, "We will see about that." The judge sent us all to the "Black Prison" [the Civil Prison of El-Ayoun]. There, a doctor saw me, asked me a few questions, and filled out a form. I was given traditional medicine to care for my arm. But my head was swollen, and I could not move my hand for three months.
Lidri stated that the police never presented him with a report (procès verbal) of his statement to them and that he saw it for the first time when he appeared before the investigating judge. The report did not bear his signature and noted that he had refused to sign it, he said.[159]
The investigating judge on July 23 ordered Lidri and Noumria held in detention on suspicion of participating in and inciting violent demonstrations, and belonging to an unauthorized association. Five months later, the El-Ayoun Court of Appeals convicted the two men along with five others (see above, the "Right to a Fair Trial" section).
Authorities told the international groups Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Front Line that they were investigating Lidri's torture allegations. Amnesty International reported,
According to a statement by the Crown Public Prosecutor of Laayoune, dated 3 August 2005, Lidri was submitted for a medical examination. The statement said the examination revealed that he bore no traces of violence; however, on the basis of his allegations, an investigation – which remains ongoing – was opened.[160]
In a meeting with Front Line, the Crown Prosecutor of El-Ayoun confirmed that Lidri and Noumria had alleged torture before the investigating judge on July 23. He showed Front Line a medical report dated July 25. The medical report noted that their hands and ankles had been bound but noted no other marks on their bodies, Front Line stated. The prosecutor told Front Line that the police log indicated that Lidri had been in police custody for three days, and denied that the police could have transferred Lidri from their station to the PC CMI.[161]
In February 2006, Human Rights Watch also received a communication from Moroccan authorities, stating that an investigation was continuing into Lidri's complaint of police violence.[162]
The investigation went nowhere, to our knowledge: Lidri reported that the authorities never summoned him to provide additional information after he formally complained and never informed him of its outcome.[163]
Notes
125] Article 231(1) of the Penal Code. For a comparison of Article 231(1) and the Convention against Torture, see Emma Reilly, "La criminalisation de la torture au Maroc: Commentaires et Recommandations," Association for the Prevention of Torture, February 2008, www.apt.ch/region/mena/CriminalisationMaroc.pdf (accessed October 6, 2008).
126] Abdelouahed Radi : "Je suis un ministre de souveraineté," TelQuel weekly, May 23, 2008, www.telquel-online.com/324/maroc2_324.shtml (accessed November 24, 2008).
127] Human Rights Watch interview with Mohamed Ledidi, Rabat, June 17, 2008.
128] Human Rights Watch interview with M'hamed Drif, El-Ayoun, November 6, 2007.
129] Moulay el-Hassan ben el-Mehdi Hospital, El-Ayoun, medical certificate, January 24, 2007, signed by Dr. Ikane. A copy is on file with Human Rights Watch.
130] Human Rights Watch interview with Abdennasser Barzali, El-Ayoun, November 7, 2007.
131] Human Rights Watch phone interview with el-Mehdi ez-Zai'ar, May 23, 2008.
132] Detainees described the "airplane" as strapping a person to two pieces of wood attached to form a cross, set up on a pivot, with each hand and foot tied to an end of the cross.
133] Human Rights Watch interview with Omar Chtouki, El-Ayoun, November 4, 2007. The Regional Hospital Center of El-Ayoun issued a medical certificate noting a fractured left tibia that the patient, Chtouki, reports was caused by "an accident" on April 9. The date of the certificate, which is on file with Human Rights Watch, is not legible.
134] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with Lahoussine Chtouki, May 27, 2008.
135] Human Rights Watch interview with Nifa' Akhtour, Smara, November 7, 2007.
136] Sahrawis have borrowed this Arabic term for the Palestinian popular uprising against the Israeli occupation to refer to their own campaign of street protests and resistance to Moroccan rule.
137] Human Rights Watch interview with Kamal Dhlimi, Smara, November 7, 2007.
138] Human Rights Watch interview with Ngilla al-Awassi, El-Ayoun, November 4, 2007.
139] Human Rights Watch interview with Zahra Amidane, El-Ayoun, November 4, 2007.
140] Human Rights Watch interview with Hassan Duihi, El-Ayoun, November 4, 2007.
141] Human Rights Watch phone interview with Hassan Duihi, June 1, 2008.
142] Email communication from Hassan Duihi to Human Rights Watch, May 4, 2008.
143] Human Rights Watch interview with Hamoud Iguilid, El-Ayoun, November 5, 2007 and email communication from Iguilid to Human Rights Watch, August 9, 2008.
144] "Detailed Report on the Events Occurring in El-Ayoun," AMDH El-Ayoun-Sahara, May 26, 2005 (in Arabic).
145] Amnesty International, "Morocco / Western Sahara: Sahrawi human rights defenders under attack," AI Index: MDE 29/008/2005,November 24, 2005, http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE290082005?open&of=ENG-MAR (accessed November 26, 2008).
146] Email communication from Iguilid, August 9, 2008.
147] Letter from Human Rights Watch to Moroccan Minister of Justice Abdelouahed Radi, December 28, 2007, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/12/28/morocc17657.htm.
148] Email communication from the Embassy of Morocco, Washington, DC, to Human Rights Watch, February 21, 2008, www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Reponse_du_gouvernement.pdf (in French).
149] The complaints are at www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Rahmouni_complaint.pdf and www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Ansari_complaint.pdf (both in Arabic).
150] The document is at www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Casier_Judiciaire_de_Dahha_RAHMOUNI.pdf (in Arabic).
151] www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Verdict_de_La%20Cour_fr.pdf (in French) and www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Verdict_de_La%20Cour.pdf (in Arabic).
152] www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Amb_Mekouar.pdf (in French).
153] See Human Rights Watch, "Morocco: Sham Inquiry Highlights Impunity for Police Abuse," May 8, 2008, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/05/08/morocc18762.htm.
154] The court received and stamped them as ش06/123 dated May 31, 2006 and [number illegible] dated December 20, 2006).
155] Human Rights Watch, "Letter to King Mohammed VI on the Trial of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders in the Western Sahara," December 9, 2005, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/09/morocc12181.htm; Amnesty International, "Morocco/Western Sahara: New arrests and allegations of torture of Sahrawi human rights defenders," AI Index: MDE 29/004/2005, August 1, 2005, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE29/004/2005/en/dom-MDE290042005en.html (accessed November 30, 2008); Front Line, "Western Sahara Mission report May 3-10, 2006," http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/237 (accessed November 29, 2008).
156] Renseignements généraux is an agency that is part of Morocco's Interior Ministry and that collects information domestically on various political and associational and union activities.
157] The PC CMI, the Poste deCommandement des Compagnies Mobiles d'Intervention (Command Post of the Mobile Intervention Groups), is an unacknowledged detention facility outside of El-Ayoun, a place to which the police "disappeared"Sahrawi activists for years at a time in the 1980s and until 1991. It is near the banks of the Oued es-Saguia and has an odor of sewage, according to detainees who have been held there.
158] Police had arrested el-Moutaouakil and Gaoudi in Casablanca and transported them to El-Ayoun.
159] Email communication from el-Houcine Lidri to Human Rights Watch, August 23, 2008.
160] Amnesty International, "Morocco/Western Sahara: Sahrawi human rights defenders under attack."
161] "Front Line Western Sahara Mission Report."
162] "Answer from the Ministry of Justice to the request for information from Human Rights Watch on the events in El-Ayoun in May 2005," undated fax, in Arabic, received by Human Rights Watch in February 2006.
163] Email communication from CODESA to Human Rights Watch, July 30, 2008. CODESA is the El-Ayoun-based human rights organization with which Lidri is now active.
Note
Picture: Group Doueh: Guitar Music From The Western Sahara
http://www.estradasphere.com/eshop/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&products_id=103
Print
Email
