RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Mohamed Ziane, a former Moroccan human rights minister, was sentenced Friday to five years in prison in a corruption case that his lawyer described as retaliation for his outspoken views and work defending political prisoners.
An appeals court in Rabat handed down the verdict after a hearing in which the frail 81-year-old Ziane – once known for his loud and combative rhetoric – remained silent in protest.
The court had previously found him and two other colleagues guilty of corruption and embezzlement from their political party during Morocco’s 2015 election campaign.
Ali Reda Ziane — his lawyer, who is also his son — strongly denied the charges brought by his father and his two colleagues. He said the court had not followed normal procedures in the case or in any of the appeals, all 17 of which the defense lost.
He also connected the proceedings to his father’s case. defense of journalists and activists who had been charged with other crimes after criticizing the government.
“It means that freedom of expression in Morocco has been curtailed,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday.
The verdict marks the latest development in one of the freedom of expression cases condemned by Moroccan authorities. international allies and human rights organizations. It is in addition to a three-year prison sentence imposed in 2022, in which Ziane was found guilty of 11 charges including defamation, adultery, sexual harassment and insulting a public servant.
In a statement Sunday, the Moroccan Association for the Support of Political Prisoners called the charges arbitrary and the proceedings unfair. The group described the case against Ziane as “purely political, aimed at humiliating and subjugating the man and discouraging him from expressing his opinions.”
Ziane was among those featured in a 2022 Human Rights Watch report detailing Morocco’s crackdown on freedom of expression for government critics.
“Since the mid-2010s, Moroccan authorities have increasingly charged and prosecuted leading journalists and activists for non-speech crimes, including crimes involving consensual sex,” the report said.
The Moroccan government dismissed the report as biased and said it was full of false accusations. A government spokesman did not respond to questions about Ziane’s conviction on Monday.
The report documented how authorities convicted one of Ziane’s sons of concealing a witness and obstructing justice after a woman scheduled to testify in a human rights case Ziane was defending slept in their home for safety reasons before her court appearance.
It also detailed how pro-government media published leaked images and videos — including ones containing nudity — and suggested Ziane was having an affair with a client. His son and lawyer told The Associated Press that the legal complaints filed against him began after he accused Moroccan intelligence services of being behind the leak — an accusation that the country’s Interior Ministry rejected. refused.
In 2023, Amnesty International said Ziane’s legal troubles were based on “trumped-up charges arising from his work defending activists, journalists and victims of human rights violations.”
Ziane has defended, among others, Taoufik Bouachrine, the former editor of the independent Arabic-language daily Akhbar Al-Youm, and Nasser Zefzafi, an activist who led an anti-government protest movement in the Rif region of northern Morocco last decade.
Bouachrine is currently serving a 15-year sentence for human trafficking, blackmail and sexual misconduct, while Zefzafi is serving a 20-year sentence for undermining public order and threatening national unity.
Ziane’s defense of both men follows decades of human rights activism that began after he stepped down as Morocco’s Minister of Human Rights, a position he held from 1996 to 1997. After serving as president of the Rabat Bar Association, he began defending activists and journalists critical of the government in 2017, making him one of the rare voices to have ever served in the Moroccan government.
