According information from Maître Olfa OULED, the lawyer for the group of prisoners of Gdeim Izik, the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court of Morocco) will hold a hearing on November 4, 2020 at 9:30 a.m.
This hearing comes after a long legal process and should settle the question of the guilt of the prisoners one last time.
Indeed, the first trial took place in 2013 at the Military Tribunal of Rabat and the prisoners were sentenced to heavy sentences on the basis of confessions admitted under torture.
After appealing the decision, the Moroccan Court of Cassation quashed the judgment of the Military Tribunal and referred the case to the Rabat Court of Appeal, without even analyzing the various arguments of the parties.
Recall that the last trial of Gdeim Izik’s prisoners was held in July 2017 before the Court of Appeal. The judgment handed down did not change the first judgment of the Military Tribunal.
The two trials did not meet the most basic principles of a fair trial, and the detainees’ request to initiate an independent investigation into the torture they continuously denounced was not made in either trial.
Master Olfa OULED told us that she was not expecting a favorable development of the situation, since the Court of Cassation itself had tainted its decision with illegality by not mentioning that the defendants had raised the nullity of the procedure for the use of torture.
Unfortunately, the Court of Cassation is supposed to make a judgment by looking only at the legal side of the case. It will therefore not reanalize the facts and elements denounced by the prisoners.
Maître OULED said that now is the time for Morocco to respect the provisional measures taken by the Committee against Torture and to treat prisoners with dignity.
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