Morocco

The security apparatus includes several overlapping police and paramilitary organizations.  The Border Police and the National Security Police are departments of the Ministry of Interior, the Judicial Police falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, and the Royal Gendarmerie reports to the Palace. Some members of the security forces continued to commit serious human rights abuses.

The economy is based on large phosphate reserves, a diverse agricultural sector, fisheries, a sizable and growing tourist industry, a growing manufacturing sector (especially textiles), and a dynamic, deregulated telecommunications sector.  There are considerable remittances from citizens working abroad.  The illegal production and export of cannabis also is a significant economic activity, particularly in the north.  Economic growth is highly dependent on agricultural output, which has been affected adversely by 2 consecutive years of worsening drought.  According to the Government's statistics, the real gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.7 percent in 1999.  A similar outcome is estimated for 2000.

The Government generally respected the rights of its citizens in most areas; however, the Government's record was generally poor in a few areas, and there were some notable setbacks.  Citizens do not have the full right to change their government.  While then-King Hassan II's appointment of a first-ever opposition coalition government in 1998 marked a significant step toward democratization, officially recognized corruption and vote-buying in the September Chamber of Counselors elections constituted a notable setback.  There were reports of several suspicious deaths in police custody.  Some members of the security forces occasionally tortured or otherwise abused detainees, and beat protesters on numerous occasions.  Despite some progress by the Government, human rights groups continue to call for full disclosure of all available information concerning citizens abducted by the Government from the 1960's through the 1980's.  Despite significant efforts by the Government, prison conditions remain harsh.  Authorities sometimes arbitrarily arrest and detain persons.  The judiciary historically has been subject to corruption and Interior Ministry influence; however, the Government continued to implement judicial reforms in order to increase the level of the judiciary's independence and impartiality.  Nonetheless, human rights organizations and activists alleged a lack of due process in several high-profile court trials, including 2 controversial military court trials involving an air force captain who, after criticizing corruption in the military to a foreign news publication, ultimately was sentenced to 21/2 years in prison for violating the Military Code; five Sahrawi youths who, after being arrested in Laayoune for throwing stones at police, were sentenced to 5 to 10 years' imprisonment for forming a criminal association; and unemployed graduates who were detained during protests in Rabat in June.  At times authorities infringed on citizens' privacy rights.  The Government's record on press freedom was inconsistent during the year.  While the Government permitted extensive coverage of formerly taboo topics it systematically restricted press freedom on several specific topics that it considers sensitive, and on which journalists continue to practice self-censorship, including criticism of the Monarchy, Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara, and the sanctity of Islam.  It appeared that the Government also increased restrictions on both domestic and international media to prevent reporting on some topics with the potential to reflect negatively on the country's international image.  The Government censored and banned at least 12 domestic and foreign publications during the year.  On December 2, Prime Minister Youssoufi used the highly controversial and long-criticized Article 77 of the Press Code to ban three investigative weekly newspapers.  The Government limited freedom of assembly and association.  In numerous incidents during the year, police beat and violently dispersed demonstrators.  The Government limited freedom of religion.  Although non-Muslim foreigners may practice their religions freely, missionaries who proselytize face expulsion, and converts from Islam to other religions continue to experience social ostracism.  The Government monitors the activities of mosques.  During the summer, the Government prevented members of an Islamist group, whose leader has questioned the legitimacy of the Monarchy, from gaining access to campgrounds and beaches for group prayer sessions, and arrested and jailed some of the group's members.  The Government at times restricts freedom of movement and withholds the granting of passports for foreign travel.  Domestic violence and discrimination against women are common.  Teenage prostitution is a problem in urban centers.  Berbers face cultural marginalization, and continue to press the Government to preserve their language and culture.  Unions are subject to government interference, child labor also is a problem, and the Government has not acted to end the plight of young girls who are subjected to exploitative and abusive domestic servitude. 

However, there was further progress on some important human rights issues during the year.  In February and August, the courts sentenced to prison terms five members of the security forces who were convicted for their involvement in the beating deaths of prisoners.  In order to implement reforms enacted into law in 1999, the National Prison Administration initiated a series of activities to improve living conditions inside prisons, including the construction of family visitation centers, manual skills training facilities, and visits by various entertainers.  In July the Royal Arbitration Commission that the King established in 1999 to indemnify former political prisoners and their families, released an initial grant of compensation totaling approximately $14 million (140 million dirhams), which benefited 68 victims or their families; some of the grant money went to Sahrawis from the Western Sahara who were in need of urgent provisional financial and medical aid.  The July compensation also supplemented an initial Government allotment to the commission of roughly $4 million (40 million dirhams) in April that went to meet the urgent medical needs of 39 former prisoners and their survivors.  The Government continued to clear a backlog of unenforced legal judgments from previous years.  In May the Government allowed Islamist dissident Sheik Abdessalam Yassine to leave his home after 11 years of house arrest for refusing to acknowledge the religious authority of then-King Hassan II.  The Constitutional Council overturned a number of election results considered fraudulent from the 1997 legislative elections, as well as results from a by-election held in June.  The King appointed the Monarchy's first female royal counselor in March and confirmed the appointment of the first female minister in September.  In May the Government accorded "public utility" status, which confers organizations with financial benefits as recognition of their serving the public interest, to two of the country's leading human rights organizations, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) and the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights (OMDH).  In October the Government permitted an organization of former political detainees, as well as hundreds of human rights activists, to travel to and hold a remembrance ceremony at the notorious former secret detention center of Tazmamart, whose existence the authorities formerly denied.  Throughout the year, the Human Rights Ministry held numerous human-rights-awareness training sessions with teachers and some police personnel, and the Government increased its efforts to introduce human rights as a core subject of the national school curriculum.  In September the Government hosted a human rights training seminar for representatives of Arab governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) in the Arab world.  During her visit in April to attend an international conference on national human rights institutions and open a U.N.-sponsored human rights information center, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said that while there were still problems to resolve, the country had achieved "significant progress" in human rights over the past 2 years.  In January the Human Rights Ministry announced an agreement with the Moroccan Barristers Association to open a network of legal support centers for victims of domestic violence.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

a. Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing

There were no reports of political killings.  According to a report in the February newsletter of the AMDH, Ali Akzkane died on January 4 under suspicious circumstances, while in police custody in the southern town of Tiznit, after being apprehended during an attempted robbery.  In response to a January 13 newspaper article that called attention to the AMDH's report and its request for a government investigation, the Inspector General of the National Security Police in early March denied accusations of police malfeasance in the death.  According to the Inspector General, Akzkane committed suicide in his jail cell 2 hours after being incarcerated, and authorities immediately notified the public prosecutor and regional doctor.  An investigation ensued and, according to the Inspector General, discussions with Akzkane's family revealed that he had been suffering from depression.  Results of the autopsy reportedly attributed Akzkane's death to suicide.  According to the AMDH, it was contacted by the Government regarding the affair in September and told that the authorities were reviewing the case.  There were no results in the investigation by year's end (see Section 1.c.).

The AMDH's bureau in Taounate (outside of Fez) reported suspicious circumstances in the death of Mustapha Najiaji, after a Royal Armed Forces patrol took him and another citizen into custody at 2 a.m. on July 12; the press reported that security forces detained the two for public drunkenness and possession of illegal narcotics.  According to the second citizen, the patrol took him and Najiaji to a "bechouia" (an administrative center under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry that contains holding cells) and beat them until 3 a.m.  The security forces subsequently freed the second citizen after Najiaji fell down, lost consciousness, and stopped breathing.  According to the AMDH report, at 4 a.m. the security forces at the bechouia notified the public prosecutor that they had found Najiaji dead in his cell from a suicide by hanging.  The second citizen reportedly alleged in his testimony to the public prosecutor that Najiaji died from beatings at the hands of the security forces.  According to the AMDH, the prosecutor general of Fez orally transmitted the autopsy results to Najiaji's family, and the family's lawyer reportedly had access to the results; the results reportedly made reference to Najiaji having been the victim of violence before his death.  The AMDH expressed concern over the slow handling of the case, which reportedly was pending with the general prosecutor at the military court in Rabat at year's end.  The Royal Armed Forces patrol members involved in the case were not yet charged by year's end (see Section 1.c.).

On November 27, security forces reportedly used violent means to break up a 5-day sit-in strike at a canning factory in the southern city of Agadir.  The attack reportedly resulted in the death of one worker and injuries to eight others.  Conflicting reports attributed the death to either police abuse or "natural causes" (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., 2.b., and 6.a.).

In their annual human rights report for 1999, which was released in late January, the AMDH called on the Government "to resolve definitively and urgently the issue of deaths inside and outside police stations and posts of the Gendarmerie." 

A police officer and two members of the Interior Ministry's auxiliary forces were arrested in connection with the beating death of Farah Mohammed near Oujda in August 1999.  The public prosecutor at Oudja's court of appeal subsequently ordered an investigation.  Farah Mohammed was stopped by police authorities for questioning in connection with contraband trafficking of fuel across the Moroccan border with Algeria.  Eyewitnesses said that the police beat and kicked him into unconsciousness at the time he was detained.  He died in police custody.  Farah Mohammed's parents lodged an immediate complaint with gendarmerie authorities as soon as they learned of their son's death, which led to the immediate arrest of the police and military auxiliary officers allegedly involved in the beating.  The trial in the case still reportedly was pending at year's end.

In August an appeals court in Settat (south of Casablanca) convicted an auxiliary member of the security forces to 12 years' imprisonment and a fine of approximately $6,000 (60,000 dirhams) for the beating death of mint vendor Abdelaziz Warret in June 1999.  Two other auxiliary members of the security forces involved in the beating death were sentenced to 4 months in prison.  According to press reports in June 1999, police in Berrechid arrested Warret, confiscated his merchandise, and beat him until he fainted.  He died later at a hospital.  When his family went to claim the body and to obtain a death certificate, doctors refused to issue one.  No explanation was given for his arrest.  An autopsy subsequently performed during the investigation into Warret's death revealed that he died from internal hemorrhaging caused by the beating.

In February a court in Tangiers convicted two police officers of manslaughter in the 1996 beating death of a citizen returning from Holland.  According to reports of witnesses, port police stopped Mohamed El-Feddaoui in Tangiers as he disembarked from a car ferry in his automobile.  The witnesses claim that El-Feddaoui subsequently was taken to the police station and tortured to death by two police officers.  The two officers reportedly had been instructed by the port's police commissioner to detain and torture Feddaoui.  Both of the police officers received 10 years' imprisonment for violence resulting in manslaughter.  The court sentenced the port police commissioner to 8 years' imprisonment for abusive detention and denial of his complicity in the crime.  The court also ordered all three to pay approximately $35,000 (350,000 dirhams) each to Feddaoui's estate.  According to press reports, the AMDH principally was responsible for furnishing testimony in the case (see Section 1.c.).  

In September the court of appeal in Safi (south of Casablanca) resumed a long-delayed case and summoned three police officers charged with manslaughter in the 1996 death of Hassan Mernissi.  According to Mernissi's family, he was killed by the three police officers while in incommunicado ("garde-a-vue") detention in Safi's central police station.  Police reportedly had stopped Mernissi for drunkenness.  According to a lawyer representing Mernissi's family, witnesses present in the police station at the time alleged that Mernissi was beaten to death while in detention.  The police officers maintained that the allegedly drunk Mernissi knocked his head against the bars of his cell until he died.  The autopsy indicated that Mernissi bled to death.  Before the case was heard by court of appeal in Safi in early 1999, it remained in the pretrial investigation stage for over 2 years.  In consideration of the Ramadan holiday, in December the trial was postponed again until March 2001.

Human rights groups allege that poor medical care in prisons results in unnecessary deaths; however, the Justice Ministry in 1999 assigned more doctors to prisons in an effort to improve prison health facilities.  However, resource constraints continue to contribute to harsh conditions, including extreme overcrowding, malnutrition, and lack of hygiene.  Throughout the year, the National Prison Administration continued to allow numerous site visits by members of Parliament, the press, human rights groups, and foreign diplomats (see Section 1.c.).

b. Disappearance

There were no new cases of confirmed disappearance for the fifth consecutive year; however, the AMDH claimed during the year that the continued practice of incommunicado detention without informing the family members of those detained (see Section 1.d.) was evidence of the continued practice of forced disappearance.  While the forced disappearance of individuals who opposed the Government and its policies occurred over several decades, the Youssoufi Government, upon taking office, pledged that such policies would not recur, and that it would disclose as much information as possible on past cases.  Many of those who disappeared were members of the military who were implicated in attempts to overthrow the Government in 1971 and 1972.  Others were Sahrawis or Moroccans who challenged the Government's claim to the Western Sahara or other government policies.  Many of those who disappeared were held in secret detention camps.  While the Government in recent years quietly released several hundred persons who had disappeared, including a release of about 300 such detainees in June 1991, and although in October 1998 it issued an announcement on those who disappeared, to this day hundreds of Saharan and Moroccan families do not have any information about their missing relatives, many of whom disappeared over 20 years ago.  No explanation for their incarceration has ever been provided.  Local human rights monitors have concluded that many others died while at the notorious Tazmamart prison, which the Government since has closed.  The Government has acknowledged 34 of these deaths and has provided death certificates to the families of all but 1 of the 34 who died.

In October 1998, in response to a directive issued by then-King Hassan II that all human rights cases be resolved "within 6 months," the Royal Consultative Council on Human Rights (CCDH) announced the release of information on 112 cases of disappearances.  According to the Council, 56 of the 112 who disappeared were deceased; family members of 33 of the deceased received death certificates from the Government.  The Council added that eight persons believed to have disappeared were alive and living abroad, and that four were alive and in Morocco.  Of the remaining 44, the Council stated that it had no further information.  Human rights groups and families pointed out discrepancies between their lists and those of the Government, asked the Government for more data regarding these cases, and demanded full explanations of the causes and circumstances of these deaths and disclosure of the identities of those responsible.  Some family groups claim that the Government is not divulging details on at least 50 more cases.  In November 1998, the Council began meetings in various provinces with groups representing families of persons who had disappeared in order to collect data on their grievances and to conduct further research into the fate of those who remain missing.  In April 1999, the Council announced that it would indemnify the 112 victims of politically motivated disappearances.  Human rights NGO's disputed the Council's findings, claiming that they had compiled a list of over 600 potential cases of such disappearances from the 1960's through the 1980's.  The NGO's called for the immediate release of all remaining political prisoners, disclosure of the fate of those whose cases the Council did not examine, delivery of the remains of the deceased to their families, compensation for victims and their families, and punishment for those responsible.  On July 17, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) published a communique in which it estimated the number of persons who had disappeared in Morocco alone to be "between nearly 600 and several thousand."  The FIDH claimed that disappearances of Sahrawis in the Western Sahara could number up to 1,500, although conditions in the territory prevented full confirmation of this figure.  In October the Government for the first time permitted an organization of former political detainees, as well as hundreds of human rights activists, to travel to and hold a remembrance ceremony at the notorious former secret detention center at Tazmamart, whose existence the authorities formerly denied (see Section 2.a.).

In August 1999, in one of his first official acts, King Mohammed VI established a new royal commission responsible for increasing the Government's efforts to resolve the issue of those who had disappeared and to reach an accommodation with former political prisoners and members of their families.  The new commission met with some family members and local human rights organizations and began to draw up guidelines for the resolution of issues involving individuals who had disappeared. 

Following up on the CCDH'S December 1999 announcement to distribute advance partial compensation to the neediest victims of forced disappearance and arbitrary detention, Prime Minister Youssoufi declared before Parliament in January that his government would compensate financially the most urgent cases first.  Youssoufi's announcement came after the passing of the Government's January 1 deadline for receipt of compensation claims from former detainees and their survivors by the Royal Arbitration Commission working under the auspices of the CCDH.  The number of claims filed totaled approximately 5,900.  Human rights organizations contested the nature of the compensation process, particularly the composition of the Arbitration Commission, which they claimed lacked independence; the lack of transparency in the commission's decision-making processes; and the condition imposed by the commission that those filing claims must accept the commission's findings as final, without appeal.  In April the CCDH announced the Government's allocation of a provisional compensation fund totaling approximately $4 million (40 million dirhams), as well as initial provisional compensation for 31 of the neediest former prisoners who had been held in the notorious Tazmamart prison, and 8 of the prisoners' surviving family members.  Each prisoner or surviving family member received up to approximately $14,500 (145,000 dirhams), a sum designed to cover urgent medical and financial expenses caused by extended imprisonment.  In July the Royal Arbitration Commission announced final compensation settlements for 68 cases (benefiting 354 persons, including some of those provisionally compensated in April) that totaled approximately $14 million (140 million dirhams).  Former prisoners or their survivors were designated to receive between $25,000 and $350,000 (250,000 and 3,500,000 dirhams).  In July the Arbitration Commission began distributing preliminary compensation payments to some of the Sahrawis from the Western Sahara who had disappeared or been detained, and their family members.  As with the April allotment, the Government stated that it intended these initial payments as provisional compensation to cover urgent medical and financial expenses for needy Sahrawis or their surviving family members who appealed for compensation from the Commission by December 31, 1999.  The Government announced that additional compensation in the form of final settlements could be distributed pending the review by the Commission of petitions submitted by Sahrawi claimants.  Critics of the arbitration process continued to criticize the Commission, claiming that its composition lacked independence and that the Commission's stipulation that all of its decisions were final was unfair.  Numerous former prisoners and their survivors refused to file a claim.  Others criticized the small number of cases settled, citing that over 5,800 cases remained.  In the absence of disclosure by the Government explaining its role in past disappearances, the Moroccan Forum for Truth and Justice (FMVE--created by victims of forced disappearance and their surviving family members) continued to argue that the compensation process alone was inadequate to redress past government actions; it requested the Government to go beyond compensation to facilitate conciliation between citizens and the Government through publicized investigations into disappearances and arbitrary detentions.  After the July compensation settlement was announced, the OMDH issued a communique calling for more transparency during the arbitration process.  According to the OMDH, "the fact of not communicating these measures at the opportune time, even though the measures were limited, helped sow ambiguity and misinformation, which the issue could have done without."  In speeches given in July and December, King Mohammed VI addressed criticisms of the compensation process by announcing imminent reform of the CCDH.  According to the King, the CCDH's composition, responsibilities, and work structure would be changed.  None of the King's proposed changes had been implemented by year's end.

There were no developments in the disappearance of Abdullah Sherrouq, a student who reportedly was detained by security services on June 22, 1981.  After 19 years, his family has been unable to learn anything of his whereabouts or his fate, despite appeals by Amnesty International (AI).  In 1998 the CCDH listed Sherrouq as 1 of the 112 cases of disappearance acknowledged by the Government; according to the council, Sherrouq disappeared in undetermined circumstances; he was 1 of the 44 for whom the Government said it possessed no further information.

Associations that seek information on those who have disappeared, including the FMVE, an executive coordinating committee of former Sahrawi political prisoners, and a group specifically representing Tazmamart prison survivors, operate openly, and call upon the Government for full disclosure of events surrounding cases that date back to the 1960's.  Several front-page articles in newspapers affiliated with parties in the governing coalition called at various times during the year for full disclosure on all outstanding cases of disappearance.  The associations also call for compensation to families of those who have disappeared, death certificates and the return of the remains of those who died, and prosecution of responsible officials.  The Government has indicated that it would be more open about providing information on these past cases, and met with the FMVE on a number of occasions during the year to discuss its concerns.  Throughout the year, FMVE leaders also met with the CCDH and leaders of national political parties.  However, according to press reports in August, the FMVE'S leadership claimed that political parties were hesitant to help them address the problem of past disappearances.  Associations in the Western Sahara that seek information on disappearances do not operate free from government interference; there were reports that some members of these associations were harassed and intimidated while seeking information on missing Sahrawis.  Some also continue to be denied passports (see Section 2.d.).  

Until July the Government paid a monthly stipend of $500 (5,000 dirhams) to 28 former prisoners who survived 18 to 20 years in solitary confinement under harsh conditions at Tazmamart prison in connection with the coup attempts in 1971 and 1972.  After their release, the Government prohibited them from speaking out publicly about their detention.  In exchange the Government gave the former prisoners assurances that it would help them find jobs and reintegrate them into society; however, none of them has obtained government assistance in this regard, and some complain of being denied voter cards and passports.  After the final compensation settlement package from the Royal Arbitration Commission to the 31 former Tazmamart prisoners in July, the authorities ceased distributing the monthly stipends to the 28 who had been kept in solitary confinement.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits torture, and the Government claims that the use of torture has been discontinued; however, some members of the security forces still torture or otherwise abuse detainees.  The Penal Code requires capital punishment for perpetrators who commit acts of torture or "acts of barbarity," provided that such acts occur during the commission of a crime.  The Penal Code also stipulates sentences up to life imprisonment for public servants who "use or oblige the use of violence" against others in the exercise of their functions.  By law, pretrial investigating judges must, if asked to do so or if they themselves notice physical marks that so warrant, refer the detained person to an expert doctor.  However, according to legal experts, this obligation often is ignored in practice.

In February the AMDH reported the death under suspicious circumstances of Ali Akzkane while he was in police custody in Tiznit on January 4 after being apprehended during an attempted robbery.  In response to the AMDH's request for a government investigation, the National Security Police denied accusations of malfeasance in Akzkane's death, and attributed his death to suicide likely brought on by depression.  Results of an autopsy reportedly attributed Akzkane's death to suicide.  According to the AMDH, which was contacted by the Government regarding the affair in September, the authorities were reviewing the case at year's end (see Section 1.a). 

In April a Moroccan court in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune sentenced five Sahrawi youths to prison terms of between 5 and 10 years for the "formation of a criminal association" after their alleged participation in a March 4 stone-throwing in the same city.  One of the lawyers representing the five Sahrawis alleged that the judicial police who investigated the affair committed several illegal acts, including torturing the youths during their detention (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., and 1.f.). 
 
After his release from prison on May 4 after a royal pardon, Sadok El-Kihal, a trucker and regional bureau member of the Istiqlal party's General Union of Moroccan Workers (UGTM), contacted the AMDH with accusations that he had been arrested arbitrarily, jailed, tortured, and falsely convicted by authorities in June 1999 following his participation in a national truckers strike.  El-Kihal alleged that security forces in the Gendarmerie of Taouriate (Oujda province) tortured him for almost 24 hours, suspending him by his arms for extended periods while beating his fingers and feet.  El-Kihal also alleged to AMDH that members of the Gendarmerie tied his hands behind his back, bent him backward on his knees, and applied pressure to his stomach while somebody forced their fingers down his throat.  El-Kihal alleged that two adjutants in the Gendarmerie participated in his torture.  El-Kihal said that his jailers wrote a false police report, which they forced him to endorse with his thumbprint without first allowing him to read it.  El-Kihal alleged that it was this police report that formed the basis of his conviction at the Oujda court of appeals, which sentenced him to 2 years' imprisonment.  The Istiqlal party's Arabic-language daily, Al-Alam, published a UGTM communique on September 30, 1999, regarding El-Kihal's treatment.  El-Kihal subsequently benefited from a royal pardon and was freed on May 4 (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., and 6.a.).   

In June a foreign diplomat met with a Sahrawi student, who claimed to have been tortured by the authorities for suspected participation in May 17 to 18 demonstrations near the Marrakech University campus.  There were conflicting accounts regarding the origins of the large-scale demonstrations, during which mostly Sahrawi students clashed with dozens of Marrakech police in violent exchanges that involved the throwing of a Molotov cocktail by one student and the clubbing of students by security forces.  During the detention, police allegedly attempted to force the student to inform on other Sahrawi students who had participated in the demonstrations.  During the meeting, the student showed the foreign diplomat fresh burn marks that the police allegedly inflicted with cigarettes (see Sections 1.d. and 1.e).

On May 17 in Rabat, police arrested 14 students at Mohammed V University and charged them with arson, violence against the police, erecting barricades, and impeding free movement.  The students, 12 of whom were Sahrawis, participated earlier in the day in a solidarity protest with fellow Sahrawi students who were arrested the same morning in Marrakech.  According to a lawyer representing 13 of the accused students, one of his clients claimed that police took him to an unidentified location after his arrest, beat him severely, and interrogated him regarding his activities and links with other Sahrawis and human rights activists.  Indicating his client's difficulty in speaking in court, as well as his swollen face and eyes, the lawyer requested the pretrial investigating judge to conduct a medical examination of his client, which the judge refused.  After a series of hearings and delays, on November 17, the Rabat court of appeals acquitted and freed all 14 students who were detained in mid-May.  According to a lawyer for the defense, all of the detained students denied before the court any involvement in the demonstration.  The prosecution reportedly failed to produce any witnesses who could confirm the students' participation in the May 17 incident (see Section 1.e.).

The AMDH's bureau in Taounate (outside of Fez) reported suspicious circumstances in the death of Mustapha Najiaji after a Royal Armed Forces patrol reportedly took him and another citizen into custody on July 12; press reports stated that security forces detained the two for public drunkenness and possession of illicit narcotics.  According to the AMDH report, the second citizen claimed that the patrol beat Najiaji to death while the security forces claim that they found Najiaji dead in his cell from suicide by hanging.  The AMDH reported that the prosecutor general of Fez orally transmitted the autopsy results to Najiaji's family and that the family's lawyer had access to the results; the results reportedly made reference to Najiaji having been the victim of violence before his death.  The AMDH expressed concern over the slow handling of the case; it reportedly was pending with the general prosecutor at the military court in Rabat at year's end, and the Royal Armed Forces patrol members have yet to be charged (see Section 1.a.).

In August the media reported a case of alleged torture by police in a Casablanca police station.  Abderrahmane Jamali alleged that police officers in the Ain Sebaa-Hay Al-Hassani station tortured him for 3 days while he was detained in early August, once in the presence of a citizen who had filed a complaint against him.  Press reports alleged that the incident began in late July when the plaintiff twice filed a complaint against Jamali for abuse of confidence and theft.  After the prosecutor dismissed the first complaint for lack of proof, the plaintiff requested a reopening and more thorough investigation of the case.  Press reports alleged that Jamali subsequently was detained, tortured for 3 days, and then convicted and sentenced by a Casablanca court to 5 months' imprisonment several days later.  Jamali reportedly fainted during the sentencing hearing.  Jamali became ill within days of his incarceration and, after his family sent a letter to the prison director requesting the director's intervention, was sent to various medical facilities.  At Averroes hospital, doctors on August 11 detected an infection allegedly transmitted by parasites found on rodents.  According to the Party of Progress and Socialism's French-language daily newspaper Al-Bayane, doctors also found signs of "physical cruelty" on Jamali's body.  The marks reportedly included contusions and bruises on his neck and knees, as well as a lesion on one of his lungs.  A doctor at Averroes wrote a letter to Al-Bayane claiming that the infection Jamali contracted "does not explain all of the signs that we observed during (his) clinical examination."  Afterwards, Jamali filed complaints against three agents of the judicial police for torture; the Casablanca police department issued a communique on August 18 stating that it had opened an investigation into the charges of torture.  Some newspapers called for an investigation into the court of first instance's handling of the case because the judge and prosecutor allegedly failed to inquire into the detainee's fragile state of health, as required by law.

In September the media reported on two cases of alleged torture by a deputy officer from the Royal Gendarmerie brigade in Zaio, in the northeastern part of the country.  According to the reports, the officer tortured two persons in order to extort money from their family and friends.  In one of the cases, a cafe owner alleged that in September the officer slapped him in front of his customers, used force to remove him from his establishment, and subjected him to various forms of torture at brigade headquarters.  In the second case, an elderly woman brought suit against the same officer for torturing her son and extorting approximately $500 (5,000 dirhams) from her to stop the torture.  After he was informed of the cases, Zaio's municipal president (who also is a Member of Parliament) reportedly referred the cases immediately to the national authorities.  An investigation into the alleged torture was ongoing at year's end.

At the October 27 trial of 10 students at the University of Hassan I in Settat, each of the students reportedly declared before the Settat court of first instance that they were forced under duress and torture to sign (by thumb prints) their police statements.  According to a communique from the Party of Progress and Socialism (PPS) political party, two of its members who were involved in the incident "were victims of grave physical cruelty" during their transfer to the police station and during their detention (see Sections 1.e. and 2.b.).

The OMDH filed a complaint on behalf of some of those who were detained and abused by the police at the end of September 1999, following several days of protests over a variety of social grievances in Laayoune in the Western Sahara (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., 1.f., and 2.b.).  There was photographic and other evidence to substantiate claims that the police systematically had beaten some of the persons they had detained in connection with the protests.  An investigation was opened into the charges; however, after almost 15 months no police officials have been charged in connection with the force used to break up the protests, nor for the beatings inflicted on some of those detained by the police.  (Some police officials allegedly responsible subsequently were transferred in 1999 and the chief of police in Laayoune was relieved of his duties there.) 

In its 2000 annual international human rights report released in June, Amnesty International acknowledged that security forces involved in several cases of torture had been arrested and prosecuted.  However, the organization noted that "in the majority of cases, investigations were either not opened into complaints and allegations of torture ... or were opened but dismissed without adequate investigation."  

Frustrated by what it perceived to be the Interior Ministry's slow implementation of measures to ensure a more humane Government with greater transparency, which were urged by King Mohammed VI in 1999, the OMDH in February publicized a memorandum it sent to Interior Minister Ahmed Midaoui in January calling for a dialog between Midaoui's ministry and human rights organizations.  The OMDH appealed to the Interior Minister to implement a series of proposed measures, including measures reinforcing individual protections against torture through the full implementation of the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, destroying police files on former political prisoners or exiles, and ending illegal punitive detention measures by local authorities.
In 1999 the OMDH published a special newspaper in which it called on the Government to implement legislation that would criminalize the use of torture and would control the conditions under which detainees are kept in garde-a-vue detention and in prisons.  The OMDH claimed that most cases of torture submitted to the justice system involved incidents that occurred in front of witnesses or in public areas.  According to the OMDH, torture in detention largely continues to escape the notice of the judiciary.  The OMDH noted that the implementation of judges' instructions on eliminating the use of torture has been "exceedingly slow."  While the OMDH admitted that the use of torture has diminished over the years, it claimed that it has not disappeared.  The OMDH alleged in its report that those who commit such abuses "do so with impunity in almost all cases."  The NGO called on the Government to harmonize domestic law with its responsibilities under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to ensure full independence for the judiciary, and to punish those who resort to torture.

In February Human Rights Minister Mohammed Aujjar announced plans by the newly formed NGO Association for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (ARVT) to open a rehabilitation center in Casablanca designed to assist former torture victims in overcoming torture-related trauma.  At an inaugural event, Prime Minister Youssoufi said that the center constituted a new milestone in the consolidation of the rule of law. 

Also in February, Mohammed Kholti, a retired secret police officer who tortured political dissidents during the 1970's and 1980's publicly asked for forgiveness in a letter sent to two national newspapers, which published his plea.  Kholti's act marked the first time that a former member of the security forces had admitted to past use of torture. 

In April Reuter's news services reported the lifting of a 13-year ban on a book that described harsh conditions in a high security prison.  According to author Abdelkader Chaoui, his book, "The Unachieved Past," had been banned since its publication in 1987.  The book describes the harsh conditions in the Kenitra prison, in which the author was held for 15 years.  Chaoui was jailed in 1974 because of his leftist political opinions and leadership role in a Marxist-Leninist organization.  In November in Marrakesh, King Mohammed awarded Chaoui a literary prize for his most recent novel (see Section 2.a.). 

In May the Government permitted the local publication and sale of a comic book called "They Even Starve Rats."  Written and illustrated by Abdelaziz Mouride, a leftist student whom the authorities arbitrarily detained in 1974, sentenced to 22 years in prison, and then freed in 1984, the comic book recounts in vivid detail the torture, injustice, and humiliation that the author and other political dissidents suffered at the hands of the authorities.  Using the third person to narrate his experience, Mouride depicts the manner in which the authorities kidnaped dissidents, tortured them in secret detention centers, staged sham trials, and then incarcerated them in remote prisons, where some lost their sanity or died.  Mouride secretly was able to send out drawings of his ordeals with visiting friends and relatives.  Mouride said that human rights organizations played the principal role in securing his freedom in 1984 (see Section 2.a.).

Also in May, a delegation from the International Center for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims visited the country to discuss the Government's compliance with the U.N. Convention Against Torture.  The delegation told Human Rights Minister Aujjar that it sought to hold its next world congress in Morocco. 

In an October 23 "Open Letter to the Minister of Justice" that it distributed to domestic as well as international media, the AMDH for the first time published a list containing 14 names of alleged former torturers and officials involved in disappearances and arbitrary detention.  The first domestic newspaper to republish the list was Le Journal.  Some of the listed names were high-ranking officials currently holding office, including the head of the Royal Gendarmerie and secret services.  Former Interior Minister Driss Basri's name also was included in the list.  In the letter, the AMDH called for "the truth and pursuit of those responsible for disappearances."  The AMDH also criticized the Justice Ministry for its alleged nonintervention in past cases of torture and disappearance (see Section 2.a.).

In 1998 the Ministry of Justice and the prison administration implemented a law that makes autopsies routine for any death that occurs in detention, in order to allow allegations of torture to be evaluated.  The autopsies take place at the request of the family, human rights NGO's, or the state prosecutor, and at the order of a judge.  Autopsies were used to prove allegations of abuse in at least two cases during the year. 

In incidents throughout the year, police continued to use force to disperse several demonstrations by unemployed university graduates associated with the National Association of Unemployed Graduates (known by its French acronym, ANDC), an organization not recognized by the Government, and "Group 314" (a separate organization of unemployed state doctoral graduates of medicine and engineering), and other groups to a lesser extent.  In numerous incidents throughout the country during the year, police beat demonstrators with batons in order to disperse them (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., and 2.b.).  On February 2, in the village of Tarmilet, security forces used force, including rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons, to remove striking workers who had blockaded a water-bottling factory to protest lay-offs (see Sections 1.d., 1.f., 2.b., 2.d., and 6.a.).  On June 18 in Rabat, security forces again resorted to force, using batons and tear gas to disperse ANDC demonstrators and to remove Group 314 hunger strikers from the local headquarters of an independent national union (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., and 2.b.).  On July 26 and again on September 12, police violently dispersed disabled, unemployed university graduates who were protesting the denial of their right to employment (see Sections 2.a., 2.b., and 5).  On October 8 in Casablanca, police dispersed with tear gas 2,000 to 3,000 Islamists who were protesting the Israeli Government's actions against Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza in the fall (see Section 2.b.).  On October 23, security forces used violent means to break up a demonstration by students who were preparing to begin a march to protest transportation problems at Hassan I University in Settat (see Sections 1.e. and 2.b.).  There were reports in the fall of violent clashes at university campuses around the county between security forces and JCO students engaged in student elections (see Sections 1.e. and 2.b.).  On November 27, security forces reportedly used violent means to break up a 5-day sit-in strike at a canning factory in the southern city of Agadir.  The attack reportedly resulted in the death of one worker and injuries to eight others (see Sections 1.a., 1.d., 2.b., and 6.a.).  During the weekend of December 9 to 11, security forces throughout the country used violent means to disperse human rights activists, members of the JCO, and unemployed graduates who separately gathered in Rabat and other large cities to demonstrate for different reasons (see Sections 1.d., 1.e., 2.a., 2.b., and 4).

In February a Tangiers court convicted two police officers of manslaughter in the 1996 beating death of Mohamed El-Feddaoui at the port of Tangiers, when the El-Feddaoui was returning from Holland.  Both police officers received 10-year jail terms for violence resulting in manslaughter.  The port police commissioner was sentenced to 8 years' imprisonment for abusive detention and denial of complicity in the crime (see Section 1.a.).  

Prison conditions remain harsh; however, they have improved in recent years, due in part to reforms undertaken at the suggestion of the CCDH and the Minister of Justice, and to more transparency in the functioning of the National Prison Administration.  In August 1999, the Government enacted new legislation designed to reform the prison system.  The new legislation replaced a royal decree that had governed the prison system since 1915.  Among the reforms in the legislation were provisions mandating compensation for work performed by prisoners.  Prisoners with "good conduct" records also were accorded the right to a furlough to visit family members during important holiday periods.  The new legislation outlawed the use of handcuffs, manacles, or other devices used for physical restraint, except as required to restrain violent prisoners and then only after consultation with prison medical authorities.  Procedures were established to allow the prisons to be inspected by the press and human rights organizations, and members of both the press and human rights organizations visited prisons after the procedures were established.  Visitors must receive authorization from the Director of the Prison Administration to conduct prison visits.  Special provisions also accorded women the right to keep their children with them in prison until the children reach the age of 2 or longer with special permission from the Ministry of Justice.  The new law contained provisions that extended the function of the prison system beyond that of punishment and incarceration to include rehabilitation and preparation for a return to society.

Nonetheless, credible reports indicate that harsh treatment and conditions continue, often as a result of chronic overcrowding.  Despite being designed to hold 4,000 inmates, Oukacha Central Prison in Casablanca currently holds more than 7,000 prisoners.  Human rights groups allege that poor medical care in prisons results in unnecessary deaths.  To address this problem, the Government provided special funds in the 1998-99 budget for the renovation of prison facilities, and added doctors and health facilities to prisons.  In addition to extreme overcrowding, malnutrition and lack of hygiene continue to aggravate the poor health conditions inside prisons (see Section 1.a.).

Press reports during the year called attention to the extremely harsh conditions inside the detention center of Ain Atiq outside of Rabat.  While Ain Atiq's status as a detention or social center is not defined clearly, it often receives homeless, vagrant, and mentally disabled persons, in addition to juvenile delinquents.  Negligence at Ain Atiq reportedly has led to serious problems, such as hygienic and nutritional deficiencies, and harsh general living conditions.  The center also is reportedly underequipped and understaffed to provide adequate medical care.  The AMDH reportedly is planning a study of the center in the hopes of encouraging improvements.  During the year, the authorities used Ain Atiq to detain various demonstrators picked up during protests.  In June, July, and September security forces forcibly dispersed unemployed, disabled protesters in downtown Rabat and reportedly took them to Ain Atiq, where some allegedly remained for over a month (see Sections 2.b. and 5).  In the past, human rights organizations have called for Ain Atiq's closure, as well as of other similar centers.

Some press reports during the year also raised the problem of drug trafficking and sexual abuse in prisons among inmates.  The presence of cannabis is widely recognized as a problem, as is sexual abuse of inmates.  In May prisoners in the Touchka prison at Errachidia allegedly rioted to protest against, among other problems, sexual abuse among inmates.  Press reports during the year also raised the issue of some prisoners being allowed to pay for the right to occupy their own cells.

In the first visit of its kind, Members of Parliament visited Sale prison in February 1999 to investigate prison conditions and allegations of overcrowding.  Their visit followed that of the 2M television station, which broadcast an exclusive report on prisons in January 1999.

Although the Government generally did not permit prison visits by human rights monitors in the past, since the tenure of the Youssoufi Government began there has been close collaboration between the Justice Ministry, the National Prison Administration, and human rights groups on prison visits, which now are authorized explicitly by law.  Throughout the year, the National Prison Administration continued to allow numerous site visits by Parliament, the press, human rights groups, and foreign diplomats.  The National Observatory of Moroccan Prisons (ONPM) made over 15 visits during the year, taking extensive notes of the numerous problems facing the prison system and recounting these in the press.  In addition to noting the harsh conditions caused by chronic overcrowding (some estimates place the current inmate population at as high as 52,000), the ONPM recommended that some of the existing deteriorated penitentiaries dating from the 1920's be replaced or renovated.  According to Mohamed Lididi, the Administrator of the National Prison Administration, 20 smaller prisons currently are being built to supplement and replace some of the existing 43.

In addition to permitting an increasing number of visits, the National Prison Administration initiated a series of activities to improve living conditions inside prisons, including the construction of family visitation centers, manual-skills training facilities, and prison visits by various entertainers.  Early in the year, the civilian prison in El-Jadida (near Casablanca) was expanded, with the addition of a professional training center and a family meeting area.  The training center provides courses and vocational studies to inmates interested in preparing themselves for post-prison employment.  The family area allows inmates to meet directly with their family members, and is equipped with chairs, tables, and a small cafe.  Telephone booths also were installed for use by inmates.  The improvements at El-Jadida were duplicated inside other prisons, with the Prison Administration devoting more resources to improving living conditions and inmate rehabilitation.  The ONPM received permission to organize an evening music and dance program for female inmates in Oukacha prison in Casablanca.  In Sale prison near Rabat, the British Embassy and the Prison Administration sponsored a musical performance by African students.  Several similar performances and cultural seminars occurred at other prisons.

In November at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, the Justice Ministry hosted, in coordination with the Rabat-based organization British Council and the London-based Penal Reform International, an international seminar on reforming the prison system.  The seminar was attended by eminent international jurists and focused on identifying constructive alternatives to incarceration.  The director of the penitentiary system participated in the seminar, speaking on the evolution of the country's penal system.  The new NGO the Moroccan Prison Observatory participated as well.

d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention or Exile

Police continued to use arbitrary arrest and detention.  Although legal provisions for due process have been revised extensively in recent years, reports indicate that authorities sometimes ignore them.  Although police usually make arrests in public and during the day, they do not always identify themselves and do not always obtain warrants.  Garde-a-vue detention is limited to 48 hours, with one 24-hour extension allowed at the prosecutor's discretion.  In state security cases, the garde-a-vue period is 96 hours; this also may be extended by the prosecutor.  It is during this initial period, when defendants are denied access to counsel, that the accused is interrogated and abuse or torture is most likely to occur.  Some members of the security forces, long accustomed to indefinite precharge access to detainees, continue to resist the new rules.

Under 1991 changes to the law, the police are obliged to notify a person's next of kin of an arrest as soon as possible.  However, lawyers are not always informed promptly of the date of arrest, and thus are not always able to monitor compliance with the garde-a-vue detention limits.  While the law provides for a limited system of bail, it rarely is granted.  However, defendants sometimes are released on their own recognizance.  The law does not provide for habeas corpus or its equivalent.  Under a separate code of military justice, military authorities may detain members of the military without warrants or public trial.

Although accused persons generally are brought to trial within an initial period of 2 months, prosecutors may request up to five additional 2-month extensions of pretrial detention.  Thus, an accused person may be kept in detention for up to 1 year.

During their February 2 operation to halt a strike at a water-bottling factory in the village of Tarmilet (48 miles from the capital), security forces reportedly arrested more than a dozen factory workers, as well as random passersby.  According to sources in the Government, the workers and passersby later were released without charges.  The Democratic Confederation of Workers trade union, which is aligned politically with the ruling USFP party, reported that security forces also detained two of its regional delegates 2 weeks following the February 2 incident.  According to government sources, the two officials were freed by royal pardon on May 1 (Moroccan Labor Day) while an investigation into the incident was still underway (see Sections 1.c., 1.f., 2.b., 2.d., and 6.a.).

In April a Moroccan court in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune sentenced five Sahrawi youths to prison terms of between 5 and 10 years for the "formation of a criminal association" after their alleged participation in a March 4 stone-throwing incident in the city.  One of the lawyers who represented the five Sahrawis alleged that the judicial police who investigated the affair committed several illegal acts, including unlawfully entering the homes of the youths and detaining them, torturing them during their detention, and forcing the youths to sign under duress police reports, which they were not allowed to read and which they claimed contained falsehoods.  The decision was appealed to the court of appeals in Laayoune and was reportedly before the Supreme Court in Rabat at year's end (see Sections 1.c., 1.e., and 1.f.). 

On May 3, members of the ANDC and other unemployed persons in Meknes staged a sit-in before a local police station to protest the situation of the unemployed and alleged favoritism in local government hiring practices.  According to press reports, city officials called in security forces, who used force to disperse the protesters.  Twenty-eight protesters were arrested and sent before the court of first instance on May 4.  The court, without explanation, adjourned a morning hearing and sent the 28 back to the police station; the protesters were summoned to the court again in the afternoon, then released without charge (see Sections 1.c. and 2.b.).  In a May 17 communique, the OMDH criticized the Government's use of violence against unemployed graduates in various cities throughout the country, including at the Meknes sit-in.
 
On May 26, the court of first instance in Marrakech sentenced 13 students to 3 years in prison for their alleged participation in demonstrations on May 17-18 near the Marrakech University campus.  The 13, 8 of whom were Sahrawis, were convicted on charges of armed gathering, assault with weapons, contempt of public servants exercising their duties, destruction of public goods, and impeding free movement.  Two others were sentenced to 2 months in prison, and in June one more student was sentenced to 5 years in prison for setting fire to a public vehicle, damaging municipal property, and contempt of a civil servant exercising his duty.  Thirty to 40 students reportedly were detained initially by police. 

Conflicting stories exist as to the origins of the large-scale demonstrations, in which large numbers of Marrakech police resorted to force to disperse dozens of mostly Sahrawi students, one of whom threw a Molotov cocktail that destroyed a police car.  One of the detained students claimed to have been tortured by the authorities for suspected participation in the demonstrations, and displayed fresh cigarette burns to a foreign diplomat to support the allegations (see Sections 1.c., 1.e., and 2.b.).

On June 13, police arrested two regional leaders of the independent Moroccan Workers' Union (UMT) outside the UMT's Rabat headquarters.  Police arrested the leaders on the UMT's premises following a demonstration downtown by thousands of unemployed graduates associated with the ANDC (a group unaffiliated with the UMT, although some of its members also belong to the UMT).  After security forces violently dispersed the ANDC demonstration and arrested 28 of the protesters, many ANDC members returned to the UMT's headquarters to regroup.  Security forces then arrived, encircled the building, and restricted access to it.  When the two UMT leaders left their union's building to observe the situation, they were taken away by police and reportedly held overnight.  Both of the leaders later were released without charge.  All 28 ANDC protesters who were arrested downtown earlier in the day later were released without charge. 

On June 18 in Rabat, security forces resorted to force, using truncheons and tear gas to disperse ANDC demonstrators and Group 314 hunger strikers from the UMT's Rabat headquarters.  Security forces reportedly arrested up to 100 protesters.  Dozens of protesters were reported injured, some seriously.  Twenty-two of those arrested were charged with "using violence against agents of authority;" 19 received suspended sentences and 3 received 2 months' imprisonment.  Prime Minister Youssoufi convened an interministerial meeting on June 19 to address the violence and condition of the unemployed population.  Justice Minister Azziman then met with some members of the ANDC, which still is unrecognized by the Government.  On July 5, the Group 314 hunger strikers ended their 28-day strike after a meeting with the Government, in which both sides pledged to engage in a substantive dialog (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 2.b.).

In early October, over the period of several days, the Government accused of espionage, detained, and held under house arrest three French television journalists from France's FR3 television station, who were reporting on a human rights demonstration at the notorious former secret detention center of Tazmamart (see Section 2.a.).

There were confirmed reports that police arrested 21 strikers involved in a 5-day sit-in strike at a canning factory in Agadir on November 27.  All but one of the strikers later was released.  Security forces reportedly used violent means to break up the strike, which reportedly resulted in the death of one worker and injuries to eight others (see Sections 1.a., 1.c., 2.b., and 6.e.).

From December 9 to 11, security forces violently attacked human rights activists, JCO members, and unemployed graduates, who had been demonstrating in Rabat and other large cities for different reasons, and detained hundreds of persons.  Most demonstrators were released shortly thereafter (see Sections 1.c., 1.e., 2.a., 2.b., and 4).

Sadok El-Kihal, a trucker and regional bureau member of the Istiqlal party's union, the UGTM, contacted the AMDH during the year with accusations that he had been arrested arbitrarily, jailed, tortured, and falsely convicted by authorities in June 1999, following his participation in a national truckers strike (see Sections 1.c., 1.e., and 6.a.).

In December 1999, Moroccan security forces who reportedly were sent from Rabat, detained one Sahrawi in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune and two Sahrawis in the southern Moroccan cities of Tan-Tan and Agadir.  Alleged to be spies for the Polisario, the three reportedly were held 8 days before their appearance in an Agadir court and before their families were informed of their detention.  Family members and the AMDH criticized the nature of the arrests, claiming them to be a violation of human rights and due process, and proof that forced disappearances still occur in the country.  In a public trial abruptly convened on May 30 after a lengthy and largely unpublicized police investigation, the three were convicted of threatening the internal security of the State and sentenced to 3 to 4 years in prison.  In an appeals hearing on July 5, all three were sentenced to 4 years in prison (see Section 1.e.).  On September 27, security forces in civilian dress detained a fourth Sahrawi at the Laayoune airport as he was about to board a flight.  In August the Sahrawi was charged before the court of first instance in Agadir for spying for the Polisario Front and sentenced to 4 years in prison for threatening the internal security of the state (see Section 1.e.).

After 11 years of house arrest for refusing to acknowledge the religious authority of then-King Hassan II, Islamist dissident Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine was allowed to leave his Sale home on May 16.  Yassine's release came after a May 10 statement by Interior Minister Midaoui before Parliament that Yassine "leaves and returns to his residence as he likes."  Minister Midaoui also stated that Yassine was free to take his case to court if he felt that his rights were being abused.  In February four members of Yassine's Justice and Charity Organization were arrested for distributing a defiant memorandum from Yassine to King Mohammed VI.  All four were charged with "violating the sacred institution of the Monarchy;" however, authorities later dropped the charges and released all four (see sections 2.a., 2.c., and 2.d.).

There are no known instances of forced exile.  After King Mohammed VI took the throne in July 1999, formerly exiled political dissident Abraham Serfaty was allowed to return to the country in September of that year.  Serfaty, a member of the (now defunct) Communist Party and a supporter of Western Saharan independence, was expelled from the country in 1991 after having spent 17 years as a political prisoner.  In September Serfaty, a mining engineer by profession, was appointed by King Mohammed VI as counselor to the newly established office responsible for developing recently discovered hydrocarbon reserves in the eastern part of the country.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary; although the courts historically have been and remain to some extent subject to extrajudicial pressures, including bribery and government influence, the Government continued to implement reforms intended to increase judicial independence and impartiality during the year.  Despite such efforts, the Government was criticized by the Denmark-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), the OMDH, and other groups for the slow pace of judicial reform.  In January the Prime Minister announced plans to create an independent ombudsman that would investigate citizens' complaints and protect them from abuses involving the judiciary.  The press reported in November, and the Ministry of Human Rights asserted, that the preparation of implementing legislation for the ombudsman post was nearing completion.  According to press reports, in February Justice Minister Azziman reacted to accusations about the slow pace of reforms by calling upon the assistance of Supreme Court justices to increase and quicken the investigation of judges suspected of professional malfeasance.  In March Azziman, through the High Council of the Magistrature, which often has been criticized by human rights organizations for the nontransparent nature of its deliberations, promoted a large number of judges whose records were considered exemplary, and disciplined a smaller number of judges.  In November on public television Azziman reaffirmed the Government's commitment to reforming the judiciary.  In 1998 Azziman had stated that judicial reform was his top priority, and addressed the issue of corruption by disbarring and disciplining a number of judges.  With the encouragement of then-King Hassan II and the broad support of the business community, the Justice Minister in 1999 oversaw the creation of a system of commercial courts for business litigation to boost investor confidence.  In the same year, the Ministry of Justice began to implement a 5-year reform plan that emphasized transparency, accountability, and professionalism as top priorities.  During the past 2 years, the administrative courts frequently have ruled against local governments that exceeded their authority.

There are four levels in the common law court system:  Communal and district courts, courts of first instance, the Appeals Court, and the Supreme Court.  While in theory there is a single court system under the Ministry of Justice, other courts also operate, including:  The Special Court of Justice, which handles cases of civil servants who are implicated in corruption; administrative courts, which deal with the decisions of the bureaucracy; commercial courts, which deal with business disputes; and the military tribunal, for cases involving military personnel and, on certain occasions, matters pertaining to state security (although state security cases also may fall within the jurisdiction of the regular court system).

Although there is a single court system for most nonmilitary matters, family issues such as marriage, divorce, child support and custody, and inheritance are adjudicated by judges trained in Shari'a (Islamic law) as applied in the country.  Judges considering criminal cases or cases in nonfamily areas of civil law generally are trained in the French legal tradition.  All judges trained in recent years are graduates of the National Institute for Judicial Studies, where they undergo 3 years of study heavily focused on human rights and the rule of law.  It is not necessary to be a lawyer to become a judge, and the majority of judges are not lawyers.

In general detainees are arraigned before a court of first instance.  If the infraction is minor and not contested, the judge may order the defendant released or impose a light sentence.  If an investigation is required, the judge may release defendants on their own recognizance.  According to reliable sources, cases often are adjudicated on the basis of confessions, some of which are obtained under duress.

While appeal courts may in some cases be used as a second reference for courts of first instance, they primarily handle cases involving crimes punishable by 5 years or more in prison.  In practice, defendants before appeals courts who are implicated in such crimes consequently have no method of appeal if a judgment goes against them.  The Supreme Court does not review and rule on cases sent to it by courts of appeal; in its role as a court of cassation, the Supreme Court may overturn an appellate court's ruling on procedural grounds alone.  The absence of appeals for defendants in such crimes therefore becomes more problematic given the fact that an investigation into the case by a "juge d'instruction" (pretrial investigating judge) is only mandatory in those crimes punishable by sentences of life imprisonment or death.
 
Justice Minister Azziman has stated that he would attempt to end petty corruption in the judiciary by increasing judges' salaries and ensuring punishment for bribe-takers, as well as attempt to end all informal and inappropriate influences on judicial decision-making in the court system.  Nonetheless, the court system remains subject to extrajudicial pressures.  Despite recent increases, salaries for both judges and their staffs remain modest; as a result, some observers allege that petty bribery remains a routine cost of court business.  In some courts, especially in minor criminal cases, some observers allege that defendants or their families must pay bribes to court officers and judges to secure a favorable disposition.

However, throughout the year, the national media reported on a number of arrests, convictions, and sentences of judicial officials for their role in petty corruption.  Reports also indicated that the Special Court of Justice, despite its resource constraints, increasingly prosecuted public servants for corruption.  In October at the recommendation of the Justice Ministry, the King approved new internal statutory regulations for the High Council of the Magistrature.  According to press reports, the new regulations were implemented to strengthen the independence of the judiciary.

After his appointment in 1997 by then-King Hassan II, Justice Minister Azziman began to reduce the judiciary's relationship with the Ministry of Interior.  Nevertheless, judges continue to work closely with the Interior Ministry's local network of officials, or "caids" (although as judicial police, caids technically fall under the jurisdiction of the Justice Ministry),  who often legally are charged with the responsibility of questioning criminal defendants.  Caids frequently prepare the written summary of an arrest and subsequent interrogation.  The summary is admissible in court as an element of the evidentiary process and can carry great weight with the judge.  After the new Justice Minister's appointment, the Ministry of Justice began to reassert its authority and control over judges.

The law does not distinguish political and security cases from common criminal cases.  In serious state security cases, communications between the Ministry of Interior and the court are more direct.  At the Government's discretion, such cases may be brought before a specially constituted military tribunal, which is subservient to other branches of the Government, especially the military and the Ministry of Interior.

Aside from external pressures, the court system also is subject to resource constraints.  Consequently, criminal defendants charged with less-serious offenses often receive only a cursory hearing, with judges relying on police reports to render decisions.  Although the Government provides an attorney at public expense for serious crimes (when the offense carries a maximum sentence of over 5 years), appointed attorneys often provide inadequate representation.

In 1999 Minister Azziman announced that in the preceding 12 months the judicial system had enforced judgments in 60,000 out of 100,000 cases of civil litigation, which represented significant progress toward eliminating a persistent backlog.  The Justice Ministry continued to make progress clearing this backlog during the year.

In 1998 the OMDH issued a report that assessed the status of the judiciary.  According to the OMDH, the Youssoufi administration took a series of steps to improve the court system, including rooting out high-level corruption, naming a new Director for Judicial Administration at the Justice Ministry, reactivating a Justice Ministry disciplinary body, publishing that body's deliberations and decisions, and organizing free and fair elections to that body.  Nevertheless, the OMDH called for additional reforms, including changing laws to reduce the Justice Minister's prerogative to suspend judges through the High Council of the Magsitrature, revamping the Criminal Code (which the OMDH stated offers insufficient protection for a fair trial), strengthening the law on civil liberties, and compelling judges to place their assets in a blind trust.  The OMDH also called on the State to punish those officials guilty of human rights abuses.  Finally, the OMDH noted the lack of resources necessary for documentation tracking and for court facilities.  At its fourth annual congress held in March, during which it distributed its annual human rights report for 2000, the OMDH called for the elimination of "courts of exception" (military tribunals, the Special Court of Justice, and the High Court), for the strengthening of judges' independence, and greater resources for the Justice Ministry.   

During the year, the courts handled an increasing number of cases that involved sensitive human rights issues, most of which were covered openly and extensively by national and international media.  Trial subjects included freedom of the press, alleged Polisario Front espionage, and Sahrawi student demonstrations in the capital and Marrakech.  Defense attorneys involved in these cases, most of whom were prominent human rights activists and members of the AMDH and OMDH, generally agreed that the majority of the judicial processes pertaining to the cases were marked by significant irregularities, and that these irregularities infringed on the rights to a fair trial for the accused. 

Mustapha Adib, a young air force captain, was incarcerated in December 1999 and tried before a military court for allegedly violating the Military Code and libeling the military.  The authorities detained Adib after he spoke out against military corruption and harassment to a journalist from the French newspaper Le Monde.  On February 17, a military court convicted Adib after 4 days of proceedings during which the judge rejected nearly every legal motion advanced by the defense.  The court denied the defense's requests that the court make the trial public, allow the defense to summon more than a dozen defense witnesses and present documentary evidence, and recuse one of the military judges, who was a former superior of Adib's.  The judge whom the defense asked to be recused allegedly was responsible for blocking Adib's promotions after Adib made the allegations of corruption in a 1998 letter to then-Crown Prince Sidi Mohammed (now King Mohammed VI). 

The military tribunal sentenced Adib to the maximum prison term of 5 years and expelled him from the air force.  Human rights activists criticized the unfair nature of the trial; the OMDH issued a report on February 21 contending that closed trials unjustly influenced the results and accused the court of partiality in refusing to recuse Adib's former superior.  After deciding on a "silent defense" to protest the military court's conduct of the case, the attorney representing Adib characterized the trial as a "travesty of justice."  Following an appeal on procedural grounds lodged by Adib's attorney immediately following the end of the trial, and after Adib staged a 5-day hunger strike in early May, the Supreme Court in June announced that it would review the case.  On June 14, the Supreme Court overruled the military court and announced that the case would be retried by a new military tribunal composed of different judges.  Adib's defense team called the decision a "historic judgment."

A newly constituted military court in Rabat retried Adib's case in early October.  After 3 days of hearings, during which the court again refused to hear witnesses requested by the defense and rejected multiple other defense motions, the military court found Adib guilty of the charges initially brought against him.  The court reduced Adib's sentence to 21/2 years in prison and upheld his expulsion from the military.  Adib's lawyer criticized the verdict as "neither just nor equitable," and said that he would appeal the new verdict.  On September 28, before the retrial began, the international NGO Transparency International recognized Captain Adib with one of its Integrity Awards for his courage in fighting corruption, which Adib's lawyer accepted for him in Canada.  In early November, Amnesty International identified Adib as a "prisoner of conscience."

On April 5, a Moroccan civil court in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune sentenced five Sahrawi youth to prison terms of between 5 and 10 years for the "formation of a criminal association" after their alleged participation in a March 4 stone-throwing event in Laayoune, which reliable sources say was spontaneous, unorganized, and lasted for only 5 minutes.  The demonstration followed similar protests by Sahrawi students in several southern Moroccan and Western Sahara cities at the end of February and early March that security forces dispersed violently (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., 1.f., and 2.b.).

Attendees at the trial, including human rights activists and an attorney for the five defendants criticized the handling of the trial, particularly the court's refusal to hear witnesses for the defense who allegedly could have testified that at least two of the five defendants had been elsewhere at the time of the incident.  In addition to the police reports, the court allegedly based its judgment on the testimony of two witnesses, one of whom reportedly could not positively identify the accused, and another who was not present at the trial, but who claimed that he saw in his rear view mirror a youth throwing a bottle at his car.  The prosecution reportedly did not present any physical evidence, nor did it present any witness who could testify that the five accused were the ones who had thrown the bottle.  The authorities claimed that the youths threw rocks at several vehicles, including one belonging to peacekeepers from the U.N. MINURSO contingent based in Laayoune, and attempted to set fire to a truck.  However, the youth were acquitted of the arson charge during the trial. 

A lawyer for the youths, who maintained the prosecution did not prove an incriminating act, said that "the verdict had nothing to do with justice."  The lawyer also alleged that the judicial police investigating the affair committed several illegal acts by unlawfully entering homes of the accused and detaining them, torturing the accused during their detention, and forcing the accused under duress to sign police reports, which they were not allowed to read and which they claimed contained falsehoods.  The decision was appealed to the court of appeals in Laayoune and then reportedly to the Supreme Court in Rabat; no final ruling had been made by year's end.  Families of the five Sahrawi youth also sent a letter to the Royal Palace in May requesting a royal pardon (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 1.f.). 

On May 26, the court of first instance in Marrakech sentenced 13 students to 3 years in prison for their alleged participation in a riot on May 17 and 18 near their university campus.  The 13 students, 8 of whom were Sahrawis, were convicted on charges of armed gathering, assault with weapons, contempt of public servants while exercising their duties, destruction of public goods, and impeding free movement.  Two others were sentenced to 2 months, and in June one more student was sentenced to 5 years for setting fire to a public vehicle, damaging municipal property, and contempt of a civil servant exercising his duty.  Thirty to 40 students reportedly were detained by police initially.  According to one of the lawyers representing the students, judicial authorities showed little concern for the need to respect due process throughout the investigation of the events and the trial.  There were no arrest warrants and no evidence was presented against any of those charged except the police statement of facts, which none of the defendants had signed (all had been forced to provide their thumbprint on the statement in lieu of a signature).  The lawyers were not allowed to present evidence in court that could have exonerated their clients.  For example, one of those convicted claimed that he had not been in Marrakech during the events.  He was not allowed to present the testimony of friends in another city with whom he said he had been visiting. 

Students involved in the demonstrations and press reports claimed that after an initial encounter between students and police, both the police and students called in reinforcements to their respective sides.  A sit-in of roughly 60 students (not all Sahrawis) in the public street in front of their residence then was held, which police reportedly broke up by force after negotiations failed.  When another sit-in was organized, the police again forcibly dispersed students and arrested several dozen (not all Sahrawis).  Lawyers for the 13 defendants appealed the court's conviction of their clients.  According to Sahrawis and Sahrawi defense lawyers in Rabat, an appellate court in Marrakesh at the end of the summer upheld the original conviction.  However, the court reduced all of the 3-year sentences by 1 year each.  Among those detained by the police was a young Sahrawi student who claimed to have been tortured by two police officers in an isolated area near the university campus.  The Sahrawi displayed fresh marks from cigarette burns to a foreign diplomat to support the allegations (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 2.b.).

During the late evening of May 17 in Rabat, police arrested 14 students at Mohammed V University and charged them with arson, violence against the police, erecting barricades, and impeding free movement.  The students, 12 of whom were Sahrawis, had participated earlier in the evening in a solidarity protest for fellow Sahrawi students who had been arrested that morning in Marrakech.  The detained students reportedly admitted to staging two sit-ins in solidarity with their peers in Marrakech, but denied, as alleged by the authorities, any use of force or violence against the police who arrested them.  The police contended that the students refused to disperse, then threw rocks at them and their vehicles.  According to students, near midnight the same evening, police squads returned to the university, entered it, set up checkpoints, detained students without identity cards, and broke into dormitories in search of those who participated in the sit-ins earlier in the day. 

According to a lawyer who represented 13 of the accused students, one of his clients said that police took him to an unidentified location after his arrest, beat him severely, and interrogated him regarding his activities and links with other Sahrawi and human rights activists.  Noting his client's difficulty in speaking in court and drawing attention to his swollen face and eyes, the lawyer requested the pretrial investigating judge to conduct a medical examination of his client, which the judge refused.  According to the lawyer, after their arrest, the students were held incommunicado longer than the legal limit of 48 hours, and nobody was informed of their whereabouts during this time, as required by law.  At preliminary legal proceedings on May 22 at the Rabat court of appeals, all 14 of the accused reportedly denied violent acts during the demonstration; however, in three of the police reports submitted to the court, three of the accused allegedly had admitted to violent acts.  None of the depositions by the accused were signed; all were marked only by the defendants' thumbprints.  After a series of hearings and delays, on November 17, the Rabat court of appeals acquitted and freed all 14 students who were detained in mid-May.  According to a lawyer for the defense, all of the detained students denied before the court any involvement in the demonstration.  The prosecution reportedly failed to produce any witnesses who could confirm the students' participation in the May 17 incident (see Section 1.c.).

On October 27, 10 students at the University of Hassan I in Settat were tried for their involvement in the October 23 demonstrations that police broke up violently (see Section 2.b.).  Each of the 10 students reportedly declared before the court that they were forced under duress and torture to sign (by thumb prints) their police statements.  According to a PPS political party communique, two of its members involved in the incident "were victims of grave physical cruelty" during their transfer to the police station and during their detention.  The defendants' lawyers unsuccessfully requested that the case be dropped on the grounds that the judicial police had not, as mandated by law, notified family members of the students' arrest.  The court reportedly also refused the defense's request to have the students examined by a doctor, as is permissible by law if signs of physical distress are visible.  At the end of the day-long trial, the Settat court of first instance found all 10 students guilty of the charges and sentenced them to from 3 to 5 months in prison (three were given suspended sentences).  Following an appeal lodged by defense lawyers, on November 9, the Settat court of appeal reduced the sentences of the seven students sent to prison, reducing four of them from 5 to 3 months and three of them from 3 to 2 months.

In an abruptly convened trial, 14 students who had been arrested during violent clashes between students and police at Mohammedia University on November 21 were convicted of disturbance of public order and sentenced to 2 years' imprisonment and fines ranging from $50 to $150 (500 to 1,500 dirhams).  The alleged victims of the students' vandalism did not appear at the trial to testify or be cross-examined (see Sections 1.c. and 2.b.).

The Government pressed charges against 33 human rights activists who were involved in a protest before Parliament on December 9: the trial was scheduled for February 2001 (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., 2.a., 2.b., and 4).

In December 1999, Moroccan security forces that reportedly were dispatched from Rabat detained one Sahrawi in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune and two Sahrawis in the southern Moroccan cities of Tan-Tan and Agadir.  Alleged to be spies serving the Polisario Front, the three reportedly were held for 8 days before their appearance in an Agadir court and before their families were informed of their detention.  Family members and the AMDH denounced the nature of the arrests, calling them a violation of human rights, due process, and proof that forced disappearances still occurred in Morocco.  In a public trial convened on May 30 after a lengthy and largely unpublicized police investigation that was originally to be heard by a military tribunal, the three were convicted of threatening the internal security of the state and sentenced to 3 to 4 years in prison by Agadir's court of first instance.  During an appellate hearing on July 5, at the request of the public prosecutor all three were given the same sentence of 4 years.  The abrupt convening of the public trial at the end of May also coincided with the decision of judicial authorities to change the jurisdiction of the case from the court of appeals to the court of first instance.  (The court of first instance deals with lesser crimes punishable by sentences of 5 years and less; the court of appeals with serious crimes involving sentences of 5 years and more.)  According to a lawyer representing the Sahrawis, during the trial the three accused denied any relations with the Polisario Front, contradicting confessions allegedly made during their detention (see Sections 1.b. and 1.d.).  On September 27, security forces in civilian dress detained a fourth Sahrawi at the Laayoune airport as he was about to board a flight to the Canary Islands.  According to the Sahrawi's daughter, who witnessed the incident, two members of the security forces drove away with her father in a car with Casablanca license plates.  Almost 10 days later, the Sahrawi reappeared in Agadir and also was charged before the court of first instance for spying for the Polisario Front.  Two days later, the fourth Sahrawi was sentenced to 4 years in prison for threatening the internal security of the state.

Sadok El-Kihal, a trucker and regional bureau member of the Istiqlal party's union,  the UGTM, contacted AMDH during the year with accusations that he had been arrested arbitrarily, jailed, tortured, and falsely convicted by authorities in June 1999 following his participation in a national truckers strike.  Arrested and jailed on charges of forming a criminal gang and setting fire to a vehicle, El-Kihal alleged that security forces in the Gendarmerie of Taouriate (Oujda province) tortured him and wrote a false police report that they forced him to endorse with his thumbprint without allowing him to read it first.  El-Kihal contests that it was this police report that formed the basis of his conviction at the Oujda court of appeals, which sentenced him to 2 years' imprisonment.  El-Kihal subsequently benefited from a royal pardon and was freed on May 4 (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 6.a.).

During the evening of June 18, up to 100 members of the security forces attacked the UMT headquarters in Rabat, where 12 Group 314 members were in the 11th day of a hunger strike.  Using tear gas and batons, security forces violently cleared all demonstrators from the area, arresting up to 100 protesters and evacuating the hunger strikers, who had been forced out by tear gas.  Dozens of protesters were reported injured, some seriously.  Twenty-two of those arrested, most of whom were ANDC members, were charged with "using violence against agents of authority."  During their trial in July, 30 lawyers representing the 22 defendants withdrew after the tribunal refused their--and allegedly the prosecution's--request to summon witnesses.  In a press conference following their withdrawal, the lawyers said "necessary conditions for a fair trial were absent."  One lawyer defending the ANDC members said that there were multiple procedural errors in the conduct of the judicial investigation and the trial.  The lawyer also claimed that all of the police statements regarding the defendants contained falsehoods, and that none of them had been signed.  After the lawyers withdrew, the defendants refused to participate in the trial.  The tribunal subsequently closed the proceedings to the public and proceeded to sentence all 22 defendants.  Nineteen of the defendants received 2-month suspended sentences and $50 (500 dirhams) fines and three were sentenced to 2 months in prison and $50 (500 dirhams) fines (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 2.b.).

During and following public demonstrations in the Western Sahara city of Laayoune in September 1999, more than 150 persons were detained by police authorities.  Most were released within a matter of days; however, 26 persons were tried on criminal charges for actions in connection with the protests and sentenced to imprisonment for periods ranging from 10 to 15 years.  The OMDH claimed that the trial of these persons was unfair and insisted that the defendants were not provided adequate legal counsel for their defense.  By year's end, none of the 26 persons convicted in 1999 had their sentences reduced or overturned (see Sections 1.f. and 2.b.). 

The Government continued to hold a number of political prisoners.  According to the AMDH and OMDH, seven political prisoners remained in detention at year's end.  In January King Mohammed VI pardoned 2,000 prisoners, 1 of whom was Arsalan Samouzi, a political prisoner who was sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment for insulting the royal family during the reign of King Hassan II.  The official Moroccan press agency, MAP, quoted the Justice Minister as saying in a July 23 television interview that there are no more political prisoners in detention.  In the past, the Ministry of Interior claimed that there were 55 Islamists serving sentences for offenses that ranged from arms smuggling in the 1980's to participating in a bomb attack on a hotel in Marrakech in 1994.  In the past, there also were claims that some of these Islamists were imprisoned solely for calling for an Islamic state during the 1980's.  The AMDH claims that 2 members of the "Group of 26," an Islamist group involved in smuggling arms into the country from Algeria in the mid-1980's, remain in prison.  The other 24 members completed their sentences or otherwise were released at various times between 1994 and the end of the year.  Various international human rights groups' estimates of the number of persons in prison for advocating independence for the Western Sahara vary from none to 700.  Amnesty International lists dozens of persons whom it considers to be political prisoners.  According to several human rights organizations, achieving consensus on a definitively accurate number of political prisoners is extremely difficult, mainly because conditions in the Western Sahara complicate attempts to confirm whether Sahrawis were imprisoned solely for their political affiliation or open advocacy of Western Saharan independence, or whether they were imprisoned for other actions in violation of the law.  The AMDH claims that it knows of no persons imprisoned for having overtly advocating Western Saharan independence. 

Although the Government claims that it no longer holds political prisoners, it permits international humanitarian organizations to visit prisoners whom such organizations consider to be imprisoned for political reasons. 

f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home or Correspondence

The Constitution states that the home is inviolable and that no search or investigation may take place without a search warrant, and the law stipulates that a search warrant may be issued by a prosecutor on good cause; however, authorities sometimes ignore these provisions.  Security forces allegedly entered homes in pursuit of persons associated with a strike at a water-bottling factory in February (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., 2.b., 2.d., and 6.a.).  One of the lawyers representing five Sahrawi youths who were sentenced to jail terms for their alleged participation in a March 4 stone-throwing incident in Laayoune, alleged that the judicial police who investigated the affair committed several illegal acts, including unlawfully entering homes of the youths (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., and 1.e.). 

During protests in Laayoune in the Western Sahara in September and October 1999, police reportedly encouraged local thugs to break into, loot, and destroy private shops.  Following the protests in October 1999, police unlawfully entered homes to arrest persons associated with the demonstrations.  Human rights NGO's claimed that such police actions created a "climate of fear" in the city, forcing some families to flee the city or change residences nightly to avoid such police actions.  There reportedly was no official investigation into such government actions by year's end (see Sections 1.c., 1.d., 1.e., and 2.a.).

Government security services monitor certain persons and organizations, both foreign and Moroccan, and government informers monitor activities on university campuses.

Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

a. Freedom of Speech and Press

The Constitution provides for freedom of expression; however, the Government systematically restricted press freedom regarding a few topics that the Government considers sensitive, and appeared to increase restrictions on some other topics with the potential to reflect negatively on the country's international image.  Nonetheless, newspapers and weeklies from across the political spectrum, from Socialist to nationalist to Islamist, publish freely, and the Government permitted extensive coverage during the year of formerly taboo topics.

The Government owns the official press agency, Maghreb Arab Press (MAP), and the Arabic daily Al-Anbaa.  The Government also supports two semiofficial dailies, the French-language Le Matin and the Arabic-language Assahra.  In addition the Government provides subsidies to the rest of the press through price supports for newsprint and office space.  A 1958 decree grants the Government the authority to register and license domestic newspapers and journals.  Authorities may use the licensing process to prevent the publication of materials that they believe cross the threshold of tolerable dissent.  Offending publications may be declared a danger to state security and seized, the publisher's license suspended, and equipment destroyed.  The Ministry of Interior may control foreign publications by collecting "banned" publications after they have been distributed.  There were multiple reports that authorities pressured domestic-based printers not to print several newspapers, including two belonging to the JCO.  In addition, the administrators of the new weekly publication Demain alleged in April that the authorities attempted to block the printing of their publication because of its investigative editorial line.  According to Demain's administrators, the alleged attempt to influence the magazine's editorial line led them to move the weekly's printing operations to Spain.  The media continue to engage regularly in self-censorship to avoid the Government's attention and possible sanctions.

The Press Code empowers the Minister of Interior to confiscate publications that are judged offensive by the Government.  Under the code, the Prime Minister may order the indefinite suspension of a publication.  The Press Code also empowers the Government to censor newspapers directly by ordering them not to report on specific items or events.  In most past instances, government control of the media generally has been exercised through directives and "guidance" from the Ministry of Interior.  However, during the year, the Government fined several journalists for articles that they had published, and sentenced one to prison.  The King subsequently pardoned the journalist who was sentenced to prison, and the fines issued against the other journalists allegedly later were dropped.  The Government generally tolerates satirical and often stinging editorials in the opposition parties' dailies.  However, both law and tradition historically have prohibited criticism on three topics:  The Monarchy, Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara, and the sanctity of Islam.

There were approximately 2,000 domestic and foreign newspapers, magazines, and journals in circulation during the year.

Prior to Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine's release after 11 years of house arrest for refusing to acknowledge the religious authority of then-King Hassan II, the Government on February 5 temporarily confiscated from newsstands in major cities several newspapers that contained a 19-page memorandum addressed by Yassine in late January to King Mohammed VI, in which Yassine asked the King to return to the populace the wealth that he alleged that the King's late father had stolen from the country.  However, the Government permitted the three publications to be put back on the newsstands the same day.  On February 8 and 9, then-Communication Minister Larbi Messari declared that the memorandum was not banned, that it was available on the Internet, and that the concerned newspapers were back in circulation.  Messari reportedly said that the confiscation was "incidental," and that censorship was absurd and no longer practiced in the country.  Four members of the JCO were arrested in February for distributing the memorandum in Tangiers and Ben Slimane (near Casablanca).  All four were charged with "violating the sacred institution of the Monarchy."  According to the AMDH, by February 7 the authorities had dropped the charges and released all four (see Sections 1.d., 2.c., and 2.d.).
 
The Government banned the distribution of the February 15-21 edition of the Jeune Afrique L'Intelligent weekly magazine.  The weekly contained a letter by a Moroccan political scientist living abroad, which criticized the reign of King Hassan II and challenged King Mohammed VI to devote greater effort to much-needed reforms.  According to press reports, civilian authorities from a Casablanca commisariat asked the national distributor of Jeune Afrique in Morocco not to distribute the issue.  In the main editorial column in the subsequent edition of Jeune Afrique, the editors stated that they interpreted the commissariat's request as a ban and decided to withdraw its 8,000 copies from Morocco rather than wait for its local distributor to receive the written prohibition order it had requested from the authorities; the distributor reportedly never received the order.  On February 16, Communication Minister Messari sent a letter to the distributor demanding to know who in the Government had banned the issue, claiming that the Communication Ministry was not involved.  The Government never established who gave the order to the local commissariat.

The Government banned the distribution of the March 4 issue of the French daily newspaper Le Figaro.  The issue contained an article about the fate of the late Mehdi Ben Barka, former National Union of Popular Forces (UNFP--later to become USFP) party founding member and secretary general who reportedly was killed in Paris in 1965 by French thugs, allegedly at the request of the Moroccan secret service.  The source of the article reportedly at the time was a physician of then-King Hassan II.  Although the Government gave no formal statement explaining the ban, on May 5 then-Communication Minister Messari commented at a U.N. Education and Science Organization (UNESCO)-sponsored seminar on human rights that "I banned the Le Figaro issue ... because it contained defamation threatening to a cause of our national history."

On April 15, police at Marrakech airport seized and prevented the distribution of two related leading weekly investigative newspapers, the French-language Le Journal and its Arabic-language counterpart Assahifa, after their arrival from printers in France.  The two domestic publications were banned at the orders of Prime Minister Youssoufi after Le Journal published an interview that its editor in chief held with Mohammed Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front.  The Government's ban of the publications coincided with the visit to the country of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.  The Government explained the ban in a Communication Ministry communique the same day, characterizing Le Journal's interview with Abdelaziz "an event organized by certain milieus hostile to our country (and) in homage to the separatist (Sahrawi) impudence."  The communique also cited as explanation "the extension of constant excesses in the editorial line of the two publications with regard to the handling of the question of our territorial integrity." 

Aboubakr Jamai, editor in chief of Le Journal, criticized the government decision to censor the newspaper, claiming that other Moroccan publications recently had published similar articles containing material from interviews with the Polisario Front leader.  At a press conference convened on April 17 by Le Journal's and Assahifa's parent corporation, Mediatrust, Jamai expressed concern that the ban likely had more to do with his paper's aggressive reporting on other topics.  On April 17, the board of directors of the state-run television station 2M fired the station's top three officials for, according to Communication Minister Larbi Messari, having made a "professional mistake" during an April 14 broadcast.  The professional mistake is widely believed to have been the station's televised reference in its evening newscast to Le Journal's controversial interview with Polisario Front leader Abdelaziz.  On April 29, government spokesperson Khalid Alioua apologized for the ban of Assahifa, calling it an error.  Unlike in Le Journal, Assahifa contained no reference to the interview with Abdelaziz.  On April 19, the AMDH reacted to the bans of the two newspapers and the firing of 2M's leadership by issuing a communique criticizing decisions that "gravely threaten the freedom of the press."

On April 26, a Casablanca court convicted Mustapha Alaoui, the editor of the Arabic-language daily Al-Ousbou, of libel and defamation of Foreign Minister Mohammed Benaissa, for a controversial article Alaoui published that alleged financial misfeasance in a real estate matter involving Benaissa while the latter served abroad as an ambassador.  The court sentenced Alaoui to 3 months in prison, forbade him to practice journalism for 3 years and ordered him to pay approximately $100,000 (1,000,000 dirhams) in damages to Benaissa and a $2,000 (20,000 dirhams) fine.  On April 27, Khalid Mechbal, the editor of the Tangiers-based weekly news publication Al-Shamal, also was convicted of libel and defamation in a case lodged by Benaissa for publishing a similar article.  Mechbal received a 6-month suspended jail term, was forbidden from practicing journalism for 1 year, and was ordered to pay an approximately $2,000 (20,000 dirhams) fine.  On May 3, another court convicted Alaoui of libel and defamation for an article he published concerning Fouad Filali, the estranged former brother-in-law of King Mohammed VI; Alaoui was sentenced a 3-month suspended jail term and ordered to pay approximately $10,000 (100,000 dirhams) in damages and a $500 (5,000 dirhams) fine. 

Journalists and human rights activists protested the court's decision to invoke statutes from the Criminal Code--rather than the Press Code--to punish the editors and ban them from exercising their profession.  The Moroccan National Press Union (SNPM) stated in an April 27 communique that "the pronouncement of prison terms in issues of publishing and the press flagrantly contradicts the rule of law and the freedom of expression."  On May 3, human rights activists and journalists demonstrated in front of the Communication Ministry to express their concerns about the convictions and other press censorship cases.  Mustapha Alaoui stated that "not even in the time of the French protectorate had a Moroccan journalist ever been forbidden from exercising his profession."

After immediately appealing the Casablanca court's decision, Alaoui and Mechbal learned in late May that the King had pardoned them, and allowed them to return to their profes