After the judgment rendered by the Moroccan justice, on March 20, in the case of the rapists of an 11-year-old girl, several dozen demonstrators denounced Wednesday April 5 in Rabat a lax verdict against the three men who received sentences of up to two years in prison. A case that arouses emotion and anger in Morocco, while the appeal trial of this case is to open this Thursday, which raises many questions, although a postponement has already been announced at the request of the lawyer of the civil party.
The case has deeply scandalized Moroccan public opinion and a petition condemning the sentence had collected more than 31,000 signatures on Wednesday. “This verdict is incomprehensible, unjust and shocking. We are here to carry the voice of this child. It has to stop ! "Told Agence France-Presse Maria Tahir, who came to protest at the call of "Rabii el Karama", the "Spring of Dignity" coalition, a collective of feminist associations, in front of a court in Rabat.
“It is time to bring justice to this little girl and her child. This type of case should in no case be judged with laxity, "said Amina Khalid, secretary general of the Insaf association (National Institution of Solidarity with Women in Distress) which supports the young girl in the case.
The verdict shocked even the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, who held a press conference on April 1, saying that this case "questions all of us, as officials and civil society actors, about the efforts necessary which must be strengthened legislatively, intellectually, educationally, to protect our childhood from rape,” according to quotes from the media. The public prosecutor had appealed against the judgment [just like the association Insaf, Editor's note], "in order to protect the rights of the victim and to ensure the proper application of the law". The Minister also reportedly recalled that he wanted to "intensify the penalties provided for child molesters in the new draft Penal Code".
Words that did not convince the Moroccan Magistrates Club. The professional association of Moroccan magistrates ruled that the minister's comments, "assessing a judicial decision rendered at first instance in a case still pending before the court of appeal, constitutes a serious attack on the independence of the judiciary".
Indeed, this case is not an isolated case. In Morocco, NGOs and the media frequently sound the alarm on cases of sexual violence against minors and call for harsher sanctions.
To better understand the reasons for this mobilization and the rising anger, we must take a closer look at the context of the case. The Criminal Chamber of the Rabat Court of Appeal sentenced, on March 20 at first instance, three defendants prosecuted for "misappropriation of a minor" and "indecent assault on a minor with violence". One of the defendants was sentenced to two years in prison, the other two to eighteen months.
According to Moroccan women's rights NGOs, the victim was only 11 years old when she was raped for the first time by three men aged 25, 32 and 37, in Tiflet, near Rabat. Her ordeal will last for many months, taken by force by the niece, of the same age, of one of the rapists. The little girl remains silent, for fear of reprisals targeting her family in particular, until the day she becomes pregnant.
The girl "suffered repeated rape under threat", which resulted in a pregnancy, can we read in a press release from the NGO Jossour Forum des Femmes Marocaines, which denounces an "unfair" verdict and calls for " harsher penalties for this heinous crime."
So what does this case say about how Moroccan justice deals with sex crimes, especially with regard to minors? In an open letter to the Moroccan Minister of Justice, published in Le 360, a Moroccan electronic newspaper, Moroccan sociologist Soumaya Naamane Guessous also does not hide her indignation. "It's too much", she exclaims, denouncing "the unbearable lightness" of this judgment which, according to her, "normalizes not only the rape of minors, but a whole injustice that Moroccans still suffer. e.s whose only wrong is to be ill-born ".
The verdict can only surprise, and rightly so, according to an investigation by our colleagues from Médias24, a Moroccan news site, "his sentences are below the minimum threshold provided for by the Penal Code". Indeed, the penalties provided for cases of "misappropriation of a minor by fraud" and "indecent assault on a minor with violence" are enshrined in Articles 472 and 485 of the Moroccan Penal Code. According to the two laws, the three defendants, who were also ordered to pay damages for a total amount of 4,500 euros, faced between 10 and 20 years in prison.
Questioned by Médias24, Me Mohamed Oulkhouir, lawyer at the Tetouan bar and vice-president of the Insaf association, considers that the facts should indeed be reclassified as "rape". "It's hard to qualify this as indecent assault considering that there are three people charged with gang rape and a DNA test showed one of them was the father of the child," said he specified. “We are talking about the rape of an 11-year-old girl for several months by several adults in a meeting. The sentence given is very light. We are not in correctional but criminal matters. The stake must be imprisonment for 10 years, at the minimum. While waiting for the copy of the judgment and these reasons, the excitement continues to spread throughout the country.
