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Duihi, contacted on June 1, 2008, said he never heard anything from authorities after
submitting his complaints: no one contacted him for additional information or
informed him of the results of any investigation. 141 He added that he still had no idea
about the contents of the statement he signed in the police station on August 23,
2007. 142
Duihi said also that he had attracted police attention as someone who had urged a
boycott of Moroccan legislative elections held on September 7, 2007. He said that in
the days before the vote, police were stationed outside his house and, on the
afternoon of September 4, police, led by officer Abdelaziz Annouche, conducted a
search of his house when his wife and children were there but he was absent. Duihi
told us that the police presented no search warrant or other document authorizing
the search. They frightened his wife and children, he said, but did not break or take
anything.
Duihi filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in El-Ayoun, requesting that he
investigate the September 4 police search of his home, but never heard anything
back about this request. The request was dated September 6, 2007 and was
stamped as received the same day and given the case number of ق م ا 07/43.
Arrests of Human Rights Activist Hamoud Iguilid
Hamoud Iguilid, an El-Ayoun resident who is president of the El-Ayoun–Sahara
section of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (Association Marocaine des
Droits Humains, AMDH), one of the oldest and best-established national human
rights organizations, has been frequently detained arbitrarily but never charged. The
focus of police questioning when they have held Iguilid showed that these
detentions were prompted by his human rights activism.
Iguilid told us that on May 10, 2008 at about 8pm, police intercepted him on an El-
Ayoun street, put him in a police wagon and handcuffed and blindfolded him. He
said that the police held him in the wagon for 75 minutes, insulted him, and
questioned him about the AMDH’s activities and the El-Ayoun–Sahara section’s
141 Human Rights Watch phone interview with Hassan Duihi, June 1, 2008.
142 Email communication from Hassan Duihi to Human Rights Watch, May 4, 2008.
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