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Second, the response claims that police detained Rahmouni because of outstanding
criminal warrants against him. Yet just two months later, Rahmouni was able to
obtain a Ministry of Justice document stating he had a clean judicial record. 150
Authorities, moreover, permitted him to travel abroad shortly before and after his
arrest, in September 2007 and then in February 2008.
These facts suggest that the warrants against Rahmouni lacked an evidentiary basis
but, rather, were a means to legitimize what would otherwise appear to be an
arbitrary arrest. In fact, Sahrawi human rights activists in El-Ayoun informed Human
Rights Watch that the police often used these warrants (avis de recherche), which
the prosecutor issues, as a means to harass activists by detaining them at will for
brief periods, and then releasing them without any formal charges.
Third, the government’s response mentioned that Rahmouni belongs to an
“unrecognized association.” The association in question, the Sahrawi Association of
Victims of Grave Human Rights Violations (ASVDH), had followed the proper
procedures for registering, but the local administration had refused to issue it a
receipt for its application. In September 2006 a court ruled in favor of the ASVDH,
saying that the local administration had acted improperly by refusing to receive its
application. 151 Thus, the assertion that Rahmouni belongs to an unrecognized
association is debatable.
Fourth, contrary to the government’s claim that the police released Al-Ansari
“immediately” on December 14, Al-Ansari stated that the police held him until
December 16. Moreover, the government dismissed all of Rahmouni’s and Al-Ansari’s
allegations as “baseless” but did not explain how it arrived at that conclusion, other
than to accuse the two men of fabricating the charges to hurt Morocco’s image.
Human Rights Watch raised all of the foregoing issues in a letter dated March 21,
2008 to Morocco’s ambassador in Washington, Aziz Mekouar, 152 but never got a
response. On May 5, 2008, the police summoned the two men and had them sign a
150 The document is at www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Casier_Judiciaire_de_Dahha_RAHMOUNI.pdf (in Arabic).
151 www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Verdict_de_La%20Cour_fr.pdf (in French) and
www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Verdict_de_La%20Cour.pdf (in Arabic).
152 www.hrw.org/legacy/pub/2008/mena/Amb_Mekouar.pdf (in French).
81 Human Rights Watch December 2008