MOROCCO: Suicide Bombings Delay Death Penalty Abolition

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Abderrahim El Ouali

CASABLANCA, May 21 2007 (IPS) - The Moroccan government has pulled back from presenting to parliament its long-expected bill on the abolition of the death penalty, apparently on the grounds that the recent suicide bombings here call for a delay and re-thinking on how to deal with Muslim extremism.

The abolition bill, drawn up by pro-abolitionist politicians and handed over to the government’s general secretariat more than six months ago, was to have been introduced to parliament in April.

It was widely predicted that after a lively debate the majority of the deputies would vote it into law before the end of the current parliamentary session in June. King Mohammed VI was known to have expressed his support – an essential requirement for a bill on such a sensitive issue ever to have been drawn up.

But on Mar. 11 a bomb went off in a Moroccan Internet cafe, killing a suicide bomber and wounding four other people. A month later three other suicide bombers died when they detonated explosives while being pursued by the police. A policeman was also killed in this security operation.

Since then there has been no official comment on death penalty abolition. All attempts by IPS to find out the fate of the abolition bill have been met with silence. Telephone enquiries directed at the government spokesman have been unanswered.

“There has been a retreat not only on the abolition of the death penalty but on all other public freedoms,” Mohamed Abounasr of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights told IPS. The return to dark days of “repression and torture” was being justified by the argument that the country was “fighting terrorism,” he said.

As an example of the clampdown on civil rights, Abounasr pointed to the police action against the May Day rally in the southern city of Agadir. Two demonstrators were arrested. They were later put on trial for defaming King Mohammed VI. They were found guilty and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

But on May 4 hundreds of angry pro-capital punishment demonstrators gathered in Beni Mellal in central Morocco. They called for the death sentence for two men suspected of a particularly brutal killing of a 20-year-old woman.

“It is paradoxical. The government allows one demonstration for capital punishment while moving against another with arrests on Workers’ Day,” Abounasr said, adding that he was convinced that the public call for executions for killers was inspired by repressive elements in the leadership now in the ascendancy after the terrorist bombings. The same people were also behind the government’s “hesitation” over the tabling of the death penalty abolition bill.

“Manipulating a section of the population to call for the death penalty is absolutely wrong,” Abounasr said. “The people are not always aware that they are being convinced to take up positions which are actually in violation of their general human rights.”

There is now growing concern among human rights activists that the government may be planning to execute convicted Muslim extremist terrorists on the death row. The executions could take place after the September legislative elections, some are suggesting. Such executions would break the 14-year-long moratorium that has been in place in Morocco. The last person to be executed was Mustapha Tabet, a police commissioner accused of raping many women and girls.

“Executing alleged terrorists would only serve as a propaganda boost for the crimes they have committed,” Omar Kharrouj, a lawyer and human rights activist wrote in the magazine ‘Attadamoun’ (Solidarity), responding to this concern. “Those who believe that the death penalty would put an end to political violence are either naive or deluded,” he added.

Other human rights activists are calling on the government to address what they see as the underlying social causes of Islamic extremism. “Terrorism cannot be fought by capital punishment,” Abounasr said. “A policing approach alone is not sufficient. We also need a social approach to the problem.”

All the suicide bombers were from the shantytowns and other poor areas. Most of them were illiterate.

The government needed “to improve the conditions of life of the people and to arm them with education and knowledge so that they can be immunised against extremism and terrorism,” Abounasr said.

The debate over the death penalty is likely to feature in the political campaigning for the next elections in September. Campaigning will begin in August.

Up to now no political parties have published their electoral programmes. But death penalty abolition is likely to be in some election manifestos, some political observers say. The opposition party Le Front des Forces Démocratiques, one of the prime movers behind the drafting of the abolition bill which is apparently now stymied by the present government, is expected to continue to champion hard publicly for a ban on capital punishment.