Mohamed Ziane, a former Moroccan Minister of Human Rights, has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges of corruption, in what his attorney described as retaliation for his outspoken defense of political prisoners. The verdict was delivered by an appeals court in Rabat on Friday, where the 81-year-old Ziane, known for his previously combative rhetoric, remained silent in protest.
The court found Ziane and two colleagues guilty of corruption and embezzlement from their political party during Morocco’s 2015 election campaign. Ali Reda Ziane, his attorney and son, vehemently denied the charges and criticized the court for not adhering to standard procedures throughout the case and its 17 appeals, all of which the defense lost. He linked the proceedings to his father’s advocacy for journalists and activists who had been charged after criticizing the government.
“It means freedom of expression has been curtailed in Morocco,” Ali Reda Ziane stated in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday.
This recent verdict adds to a three-year sentence issued in 2022, where Ziane was found guilty of 11 charges, including defamation, adultery, sexual harassment, and insulting a public official. The Moroccan Association in Support of Political Prisoners condemned the charges as arbitrary and the proceedings as unfair, describing the case as “purely political, aiming to humiliate and subjugate the man and discourage him from expressing his opinions.”
Ziane was featured in a 2022 Human Rights Watch report, which highlighted Morocco’s crackdown on freedom of expression. The report noted that since the mid-2010s, Moroccan authorities have increasingly prosecuted high-profile journalists and activists for non-speech crimes, including consensual sex crimes. Morocco’s government dismissed the report as biased and filled with false allegations.
The report also documented how authorities convicted one of Ziane’s sons for hiding a witness and obstructing justice after a woman scheduled to testify in a human rights case stayed at their home for security reasons. Pro-government media published leaked images and videos, including ones showing nudity, suggesting Ziane was involved in an affair with a client. Ziane’s legal troubles reportedly began after he accused Morocco’s intelligence services of being behind the leaks, a charge the Interior Ministry denied.
In 2023, Amnesty International stated that Ziane’s legal issues were based on “bogus charges that stem from his work defending activists, journalists, and victims of human rights abuses.”
Among those Ziane has defended are Taoufik Bouachrine, former editor of the independent newspaper Akhbar Al-Youm, and Nasser Zefzafi, an activist who led an anti-government protest movement in northern Morocco’s Rif region. Bouachrine is serving a 15-year sentence for human trafficking, blackmail, and sexual misconduct, while Zefzafi is serving a 20-year sentence for undermining public order and threatening national unity.
Ziane’s defense of these individuals followed decades of human rights activism, which began after he resigned as Morocco’s Human Rights Minister, a position he held from 1996 to 1997. He later served as president of the Rabat Bar Association before defending activists and journalists critical of the government, becoming a rare dissenting voice who had once served in Morocco’s government.
(AP)
