DEATH PENALTY: Moroccan Abolition Could Help Expose Political Killings

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Abderrahim El Ouali

CASABLANCA, Apr 25 2007 (IPS) - Morocco continues to be haunted by its many extra-judicial killings in the past – but human rights activists are looking to the long-expected abolition of the death penalty as an essential step towards encouraging more to speak out about what they know about these and help bring those responsible before the courts.

King Mohamed VI’s accession to the throne in 1999 was followed by a much-welcomed process of reconciliation between the state and the victims of human rights violations during his father’s reign. This centred on the Equity and Reconciliation Committee which held public hearings for victims and granted compensation.

The committee concluded its work over a year ago with a final report calling for the abolition of the death penalty. The Moroccan media has speculated that this recommendation could be adopted by parliament during its current session which ends in June.

But some leading rights activists remain critical that many of the gravest cases of human rights violations – the “thousands” of extra-judicial killings without the sanction of the courts – committed in the long reign of King Hassan II are still shrouded in secrecy.

“Reconciliation cannot be partial,” Noureddine Gabbaz, a member of the Moroccan Human Rights Association, told IPS. “There is only one way to complete reconciliation: truth, all the truth. We need to know all that happened to the victims. We need enough guarantees that this will not happen again.

“The abolition of the death penalty is necessary to achieve the building of a state which respects the rule of law, human rights and freedom,” Gabbaz stated. The eventual abolition of the death penalty should play a role in bringing the truth to light.

He added: “Abolition might help former secret service agents to reveal more useful information about what happened during ‘The Years of Lead’. If the death penalty is abolished and the former executioners know they cannot be sentenced to death, they might then be more ready to tell us what happened. The complete truth would then be brought out into the open.”

“The Years of Lead” is the graphic term used to describe the repression during the 38- year-long rule by King Hassan II. Dissidents and democracy campaigners were harassed, jailed and disappeared.

Typical of what is seen as only a “partial” dealing with these human rights violations is the case of the disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka, the main opposition leader in 1965.

It was a former secret service agent, Ahmed Boukhari, who cast some light on this, admitting to the press how he coordinated Ben Barka’s kidnapping in Paris from his agency’s secret Dar al-Moukri detention centre. This is a villa in the exclusive Souissi district of Rabat, the capital. Agents smuggled Barka’s dead body back to Dar al-Moukri where it was disposed of in acid without leaving a trace, Boukhari first claimed in 2000.

But despite these shocking revelations, no proceedings have been opened against anyone involved in the extrajudicial killing. The Moroccan government has also consistently ignored all calls to open up the villa and its gruesome secrets to public scrutiny. Permission to hold a sit-in to pressure the government to do this was refused.

Driss Ould Kabla, a well-known human rights activist, is now conducting his own investigations into the extra-judicial killings in the villa. This April he reported he had obtained information about these, but gave no numbers. Ex-agent Boukhari had earlier reported that it was “common” practice in the centre to dispose of bodies in acid.

Activists are also concerned about the continuing refusal of the authorities to investigate and bring to justice those responsible for the violent clampdown on demonstrations during Hassan’s rule. The Moroccan Forum for Truth and Equity is campaigning for justice over one of the worse of these, the bloody repression of a demonstration against the high cost of living in Casablanca in June 1981. Activists say security forces shot dead more than a thousand. But the official death toll is 89.

Gabbaz, who is also a member of the forum, told IPS that many of the victims were later buried in mass graves in and around Casablanca. “The official version is that victims were shot by random bullets,” Gabbaz said. “But I do not know of any random fire that aims only at heads and hearts.” One of the victims was an eight-year-old deaf and dumb child. People watching the demonstration from their windows were also cut down by bullets, Gabbaz claimed.

Driss Ould Kabla, a human rights activist, is focusing on the purges in the army. In April he published details of nine army generals who were executed without trial in 1971 for allegedly plotting a coup.

The execution was broadcast live on Moroccan television. King Hussein of Jordan and King Hassan also “watched the execution through binoculars from the Moulay Ismail Barracks,” Ould Kabla wrote. Some 30 other officers were also “executed by slow death” at a secret service detention centre in Tazmamart, a small town in eastern Morocco near the city of Arrachidia.

Ould Kabla has claimed that 58 other officers were arrested and imprisoned for other alleged coup attempts in 1971 and 1972. Thirty of them died a terrible death of suffocation, hunger and torture in tiny cells in the Tazmamart prison.

Human rights organisations also continue to press for information on the fate of more than 60 political detainees whose disappearance continues to be unexplained.

The apparent unwillingness of the authorities to initiate public investigations into the alleged extra-judicial killings, is causing continuing, deep resentment. This is compounded by the pain caused to the families of the victims watching the people they hold responsible appear regularly on state-run television.

“Those who committed these atrocities should be brought to justice – or at least leave their functions,” Gabbaz said. “It’s unbelievable that they all carry on appearing on TV.” He identified these people as top military commanders and senior government officials.