14SHADOW OF IMPUNITYTORTURE IN MOROCCO AND WESTERN SAHARAdefinition of torture under Article 231-1 which drew substantially on Article 1 of the UNConvention against Torture (see box below):In 2011, the new Constitution specifically outlawed torture under Article 22, and broadenedthe scope of the prohibition as follows:“No person, private or public, may harm another person’s physical or moral integrity in anycircumstance. No person may inflict on another, under any pretext, treatment that is cruel,inhuman, degrading or harms their dignity. The practice of torture, under any form, and byany person, is a crime punished by the law.”In the context of current judicial reforms, the Minister of Justice and Liberties has recentlyunveiled a draft bill to amend the Penal Code that similarly broadens the definition of tortureto cover any perpetrator inflicting acute physical or mental pain under any motive, and alsoincludes complicity and explicit or tacit consent. 3Although they are prohibited in law, torture and other ill-treatment persist in practice inMorocco and Western Sahara. Amnesty International’s research has revealed a continuum ofviolence spanning public spaces to police custody and places of detention. Protesters orbystanders arrested during forcibly dispersed protests are particularly at risk of abusefollowing arrest. Such abuse includes excessive or unnecessary force during apprehension,violence in the immediate aftermath of arrest including in security vehicles, as well as duringinterrogation in garde à vue detention.These findings echo an earlier assessment by the Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E.Méndez, following his visit to the country in 2012:“The Special Rapporteur examined cases of violence against protestors after arrest, includingbeatings carried out during transfer to police stations and during interrogation and thecoercion into confessions which later had been used before the courts to secure a convictionand prison sentence.” 4The following accounts from students from cities across Morocco offer a striking illustrationof the way in which security forces treated some of them after arresting them in the contextof campus protests. Students active in the UNEM student union and its diverse currentsincluding the leftist Baseist Democratic Path (VDB) in Fes said that security forces whoarrested them subsequently questioned them on their affiliation to the activist group, ratherthan on the charges that were later brought against some of them.A seasoned VDB activist, Aicha El Bouche had gone through a similar ordeal to Khadija’s3Ministry of Justice and Liberties, Draft Penal Code bill, 31 March 2015,pdf.الجنائي20%القانون20%مشروع/http://www.justice.gov.ma/App_Themes/ar/img/Files4Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment orpunishment, Juan E. Méndez, Addendum, Mission to Morocco, UN Doc. A/HRC/22/53/Add.2 (2013)para. 23.Amnesty International May 2015 Index: MDE 29/001/2015
SHADOW OF IMPUNITYTORTURE IN MOROCCO AND WESTERN SAHARA15after her arrest at the same campus a year earlier. On 15 April 2013, students wereboycotting exams in a protest in the science faculty. When security forces raided the campus,she sought refuge in a dormitory room nearby where she and 10 other female studentsbarricaded themselves. She said some students in the room attempted to film the dispersalin the science faculty from a window, attracting attention from security forces.Aicha El Bouche told Amnesty International of the violence she and the other students facedfollowing their arrest in the dorm room. She described how on their way out of the room,security forces formed two rows and forced them to walk in the middle while they hit,dragged, insulted and threatened to rape them. She said that threats and intimidationcontinued inside a police van as officers transferred them to a local police station:“CMI officers photographed us, insulting us with really dirty language and calling usprostitutes. Their chief superintendent came and threatened us, saying ‘we will rape you inevery possible way, you’ll see things you never imagined’. One student had a nervousbreakdown from all the threats and was sent to hospital.” 5Three days later, at the same campus, police arrested then third-year philosophy studentBoubker Hadari, 26, from the same student activist group. He told Amnesty Internationalthat officers arrested him while he was occupying the roof of the science faculty library. Hedescribed the security forces’ violence that left him with multiple fractures and brokenvertebrae in the following terms:“At least four CMI officers arrested me on the roof and beat me on the spot. They hit me onthe head and all over my body with their batons. Then one of them said, ‘throw the dog’, andthey threw me off the roof, which was two storeys high. I awoke in a pool of blood on theground, and found them surrounding me, shouting insults and taking pictures. They eveninsulted me in the ambulance on the way to hospital, and called my mother dirty names.” 65Interview, Fes, 29 May 2014.6Interview, Fes, 11 June 2013.Index: MDE 29/001/2015 Amnesty International May 2015
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