king of Morocco

Freedom of religion and belief in Morocco

By Riftime — 3 years ago

The King of Morocco, Muhammad VI, ordered his ambassador in France to donate money for the reconstruction of Notre Dame in April 2019: “At the very high instruction of King Muhammad VI, the Kingdom of Morocco will contribute financially to the reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris”. The Twitter post of the Moroccan embassy in France has announced. Officially no specific amount was mentioned, but on social media an amount of 200 million dollars has been circulating.

The Riffian journalist Ahmed Younes commented on Morocco’s donation on Facebook: ‘The Notre-Dame Cathedral contains works of art that France has stolen from North Africa’. The journalist does not reveal any details of the French art theft.

North Africa has a Christian history, as the philosopher and church father Augustine of Hippo was born in present-day Algeria.

Moroccans who converted to Christianity were not allowed to enter the churches in Morocco. These churches, which usually date from colonial times, are only meant for non-Moroccans.

The American Department of State estimates the number of Moroccan Christians at more than 40,000. The American think tank and opinion research agency, Pew Research Center, estimates the number at 20,000.

Choosing between work and religion

A young Moroccan named Brother Ali* grew up in a Moroccan Muslim family. He went to work for the Moroccan gendarmerie and became a member of a unit in charge of securing the king and his family. He converted to the Christian faith, when his employer found out he was transferred to a barracks in Rabat with no function. Then a wave of intimidation began, forcing him to resign from the gendarmerie.

Every Moroccan is a Muslim

According to Moroccan law, all Moroccans but a small Jewish minority are Muslims. Any attempt to convert a Muslim is illegal. Article 220 of the Moroccan Penal Code says that “anyone who uses incitement to separate a Muslim from his religion or to convert him to another religion may be punished with 3 to 6 months’ imprisonment and a fine of 200 to 500 dirhams.”

Jamaa Ait Bakrim (1964), a Moroccan convert, received a bachelor’s degree in political science. In the last century he fled to Europe and applied for asylum in the Netherlands, but that was rejected. In 1993 he returned to Morocco. He did not keep his new religion secret and this caused him problems with the authorities, he was sentenced to seven months in prison. He was then placed in a psychiatric hospital.
In the islamic countries everyone who distances himself from the islam is portrayed as a psychiatric patient.

5 years imprisonment

Jamaa Ait Bakrim was convicted for the second time and was imprisoned for a year. After serving his prison sentence, he set fire to two wooden electricity poles in 2005, because they had been out of use for a long time and blocked the entrance to his business. He had often asked the municipality to remove the poles, but without success. So Ait Bakrim cleaned them up himself, but that was a criminal offence. Add to that the fact that Ait Bakrim spoke honestly about his faith. Jamaa Ait Bakrim was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment by the court.

Pope’s visit without results

Known Moroccan convert is Brother Rachid, the author of the book The Ideology Behind Islamic Terrorism 2018, he is also a TV program maker. In a video message on his Youtube channel, he comments on the Pope’s visit to Morocco on 30 and 31 March 2019: “We Moroccan Christians are very disappointed in the King of Morocco who, in his speech in the presence of the Pope, said that he is the leader of the faithful, including Jews and foreign Christians who are in Morocco”. [not of the Moroccan convert].

Brother Rachid wonders why Moroccan Christians were not allowed into Moroccan churches, why they have to marry according to Islamic rituals, why they are obliged to follow Islamic education, why they have to bury their dead in an Islamic way.

King Mohammed VI gave a speech during the pope’s visit in four languages (not in Tamazight, the mother tongue of Moroccans, which was only recognized as an official language in 2011), Rachid called on the king to speak in another language: the language of human rights.

Death penalty chases non-Muslims

The High Council of Moroccan Ulema’s (Islamic legal scholars) issued a fatwa in 2012 that makes it possible to execute people who have formally distanced themselves from Islam. Muslims from movements other than those of the state can also be considered apostates: for example the Ibadites, the Ahmadi-Muslims and the Shiites.

Monarchy is based on Islam

The Moroccan monarchy derives its legitimacy from the state Islam established by France during the official occupation of Morocco between 1912 and 1956. The position of the king is enshrined in the constitution, so it is not allowed to criticise the king and his family.

The king was presented in Morocco as the deputy to God on earth. With the title of leader of the faithful, he forced the entire people into submission. Even if he uses violence against his subjects, they are not allowed to distance themselves from him, for this there are texts in the Koran that justify all this

*Interview in which Brother Ali had made his revelations (Arabic)

Source

Translation: Najat M.

What is the King doing about the social unrest in Morocco?

By Riftime — 3 years ago

Women’s demonstration Imzouren 2017, photo Mohamed El Asrihi

In recent years there have been protests in Morocco in various sectors and regions. People claim their share of the country’s wealth, such as fishing, phosphate and other raw materials that the country is rich in.

Africa’s largest silver mine
In Imidar the province of Tinghir there is the largest silver mine in Africa (seventh largest silver producer in the world). The local population doesn’t benefit from it, even worse, the mining company makes the lives of these people more difficult, it pollutes their drinking water and because the company consumes a lot of water, the people from the region have a water shortage. SMI (Société Métallurgique d’Imiter) is part of the Royal Holding Company and has been operating the Imider mine since 1978. This company did not hire people from the region as promised. In the last century, the people of the region have carried out various actions against the negative consequences of this mining operation. Since 2011 the people of Imider have founded a movement: On The Road ’96 -Imider, the purpose of this movement is to stand up for civil rights in Imider. The situation in the region has not changed for the time being.

Water shortage
Poor management and water scarcity are a very serious problem in Morocco, one of the causes of migration. In the southern Zagora region (Tazagurt) of 30,000 inhabitants, 700 kilometres from Rabat, people protested against water shortages in 2017, their protests were met with brutal violence and they were persecuted for participating in unauthorised demonstrations. The King’s response to the problems in Morocco is to build dams, but this has not yielded any results for the average Moroccan, nor does it provide a structural solution to these problems in the long term.

Impunity
In the east of the country, in the Jerada area near the Algerian border, people also took to the streets after coal mines were closed in this area and people could no longer find work. These protests were also violently suppressed. There is a video in circulation of a boy, Abdelmoula Zaiker, who was deliberately chased by a police car, then hit and seriously injured, and who is now being treated in a hospital in Turkey. The driver of the police car was not even prosecuted.

Death of the fish merchant
In the Rif there were big protests after the death of the fish merchant Muhsin Fikri. These demonstrations were led mainly by young people; they demanded an honest investigation of the death of Muhsin Fikri under the motto: freedom, equality and social justice, they wanted to demonstrate peacefully in the whole Rif area. After six months, the government reacted to these protests by accusing them of being led, financed as separatist from abroad. Hereafter a great wave of arrests in the Rif, which has been a military area since 1958, began. So far, people have been arrested for waving the Rif flag, taking a photo of Abdelkrim Al Khattabi and criticizing the government.

During the large-scale demonstration in Al Hoceima on July 20, 2017, there was even one death, Imad El Attabi was probably killed by a bullet of the security forces during the peaceful demonstration: According to the Moroccan prosecution, an investigation was conducted into the death of this young Riffian, and neither his family nor the Riffians saw the results of the investigation.

The funeral of the activist Imad El Attabi and the death of others.
Many people attended the funeral of Imad El Attabi on August 9 in Al Hoceima, where they held a demonstration using tear gas from the Moroccan police. The Riffian Abdelhafid El Haddad had breathing difficulties and died on 18 August 2017. He left behind a wife and three children. According to several Riffian civilians, the Moroccan police used French tear gas, showing an expired use date.

Najim Abdouni was the chairman of a national “anti-corruption committee” and was familiar with major projects in Al Hoceima for which large sums of money were provided on paper but not or not fully implemented. He was also active in the Rif popular movement. On August 10, 2017, he was found outside his front door, seriously injured, and died the same day in hospital. The Moroccan judiciary had promised an investigation, but had not yet announced any results.

The King takes action
In a speech in 2017, King Mohamed VI praised the violent actions of his police and portrayed them as victims of the Riffian demonstrators. His Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit confirmed in Parliament that the Moroccan police had smashed the doors of civilians in the Rif. There are several videos on social media that clearly show that the Moroccan police terrorized the Riffians in the middle of the night and raided their homes without a search warrant: Private property was destroyed and the doors of defenseless Riffian houses were broken open.

Leaving for Europe
Thousands of demonstrators were filmed by the Moroccan police and then arrested and intimidated; even women and minors have not escaped these human rights violations. There are also stories of Morocco deliberately leaving its international borders unguarded so that young people can flee. The asylum seekers and reception centres in Europe are full of Riffian young people, especially in the Spanish enclave of Melilla. According to the latest news from the Rif, entire families fled the country. A number of Riffians were granted asylum, for example the activist Achraf El Idrissi in Belgium, the lawyer Abdessadek El Bouchtaoui in France, the activist Basset Lamrini in Spain. This year, Nawal Benaissa and her child have applied for asylum in the Netherlands. It is not known whether their application was granted.

Mitigations of the King
As a measure against the social protests, Mohamed VI reintroduced compulsory military service in Morocco this year after it was abolished in 2007. As a second clear measure, King Mohammed says in his speech of 20 August that Morocco will work on the development of rural areas and the agricultural sector and that some 50 billion dirhams are reserved for the period 2016 — 2022. The king also explains that it is not important to have a university degree, but to have a job, and refers his subjects to practical training (vocational training) and manual work.

The number of unemployed graduates in Morocco is increasing, and this is a danger for the regime, as they claim their rights and draw the attention of the uneducated Moroccans to their rights. This is why Morocco is slowly phasing out “free” education. Both measures are in favour of the monarchy: The entry into military service ensures the influx of personnel for the police forces.
The development of the agricultural sector also benefited the Moroccan monarchy, as Morocco’s best farmland was in the hands of the royal family and other Moroccan families who worked with the Spanish and French occupiers between 1912 and 1956. For this reason, the agricultural sector in Morocco is completely exempt from taxation. The royal company is the country’s largest producer and exporter.

Source: https://amazighinformatiecentrum.medium.com/wat-doet-de-koning-aan-de-sociale-onrust-in-marokko-98bf7283b987
Translated by: Najat M.

Former Moroccan police officer intents to file a law suite against the king of Morocco

By Riftime — 4 years ago

The Spanish Legal Code laws for foreign judicial accusations to be treated and sentenced in Spain. The new Spanish minister of Justice Dolores Delgado publicly announced that the universal jurisdiction would be reactivated, so the with universal jurisdiction the Spanish judges could investigate severe crimes committed outside Spanish territory. It would also be possible for Spanish judges to charge high-powered Moroccan functionaries that are accused of violating human rights and they could be sentenced by the Spanish Courts.

With the universal jurisdiction you can lodge charges at the National High Court in Madrid, the Audiencia Nacional, to demand justice against crimes committed in other countries if the proof of their accusations has been provided. These people can be sentenced according to the Spanish judicial system.

Noureddine Boufarra, a former Moroccan police officer within the inspection department, announced through a Facebook post on 18th of June 2018 that he would use the universal Spanish jurisdiction to file a suite against the king of Morocco.

Noureddine Boufarra former police officer

An assassination attempt in Europe

The 49-year-old Boufarra holds the king of Morocco responsible for the assassination attempt in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, that he managed to flee to in 2017. According to Boufarra, 4 men tried to kill him in the capital city. Three of those men would be agents of the Moroccan secret service (DGED) and the fourth was recognized as a Syrian or Iraqi. The son of Boufarra, who was with him during the assassination attempt, still suffers psychologically from the effects of the murder attempt. Boufarra could not provide further details on the case because it is still open. He is now placed under police protection provided by the country in which he filed for asylum.

Boufarra was active as a Police officer in Nador until 2012. He worked on drug trafficking networks, illegal weapons trade and fraud cases. He and his team have seized 19 kg of heavy explosives and 600 igniters used for mailbombs. The explosives were smuggled from the Spanish enclave Melilla to Nador and were suspected to be used for an attack on a hotel that is located in a shopping center in Nador. The seizing of Boufarra led to the denouncement of some secret service agents because they did not notice and trace the illegal material.

Boufarra had reported on this smuggling case names of involved people and number plates that were used. The report was personally sent to the supervisor of Boufarra. According to the former officer, nothing was done with the report because the trafficking had links to the palace.

Embezzlement in the Rif orchestrated from Rabat

According to the former officer Boufarra, the Moroccan Palace is involved in international drug trafficking via the advisor of the king Fouad El Himma, head of the PAM party Ilyas el Omari and their contacts with international mafia groups of which he knows all their full names but won’t make public, as the Moroccan secret services could use the mafia groups as a scapegoat for his disappearing in case that he would provide the names.

Boufarra holds the Moroccan regime responsible for the fraud and embezzlement of money from a bank in Nador in 2003. The embezzlement in that bank started in 2001 when around 3 billion Moroccan Dirhams were taken from bank accounts owned by Riffians in Morocco and Europe of which many Dutch and Belgian Riffians drug lords used the accounts for money laundering. All these accounts were managed by the Wafa Bank in Nador. Boufarra was responsible for the investigation of this fraud case. After six years of thorough investigations, Boufarra acquired information he was not supposed nor allowed to know. The classified information that concerned the relations between embezzlement and several people within the royal palace. In this case, the director of the Wafa Bank in Nador and his deputy were prosecuted. Boufarra informed the king’s attorney Abdelmoumen Boutnach about the fact that the actual suspects are not in Nador but were working within the central board of directors of the involved bank in the capital Rabat. Because of that Boufarra found himself in a death zone from that moment onwards.

Detective trapped

Boufarra was tipped about a large drug smuggling operation from Bouarg (in the Region of Nador) to Spain. Further investigation has led to a confirmation of the tipped case. Subsequently, a police operation was planned and a team was constructed to arrest the drug traffickers after catching them in the act. Part of the operation was to have an arrestation team stand-by close to the location of the traffickers and to block the road during the police operation.

On the day of the operation execution officer, Boufarra went to observe the trafficking facility from a close distance with four colleagues. He could immediately recognize trafficking activities and thus called his supervisor, regional chef Driss Rougui. Driss was not reachable, while Boufarra tried to call him several times. His supervisor had his phone turned off any Boufarra could not call for additional supporting units. Shortly after the attempted calls, he saw some of the involved drug traffickers walking towards him. At that moment, he knew it was a trap to get rid of him via the traffickers. He immediately ordered his colleagues to leave the area as he did himself directly after that.

According to Boufarra, his own chef had forsaken him so that the drug traffickers could get rid of him if he was not able to protect himself. Driss Rougui did not work alone but with the help of the chief commissioner Abdellah Bellahfid of the police (DGSN) in Oujda, chief commissioner of the internal secret service (DGST) Mohamed Alaoui in Oujda and regional chef of the internal secret service Mohamed Zah Eddine (DGST) in Oujda. According to Boufarra, these high secret service functionaries had received an order from the palace to erase him in an indirect manner.

Murder attempt on the underage son of Boufarra in Morocco

After the previous events, Boufarra was threatened by a drug baron with vengeance on his son. In 2012 the underage son of Boufarra was attacked in Oujda. The attack resulted in a head wound consisting of a 7 cm long, 3 cm wide and 4 cm deep cut.

Subsequently, Boufarra was fired and marked as AWOL. He was not even sent to the council before firing him with an AWOL mark attached. He brought his dismissal to the courthouse in Oujda which resulted in the judge deciding in his favour. The employer of Boufarra, the DGSN, the Moroccan security service, went for an appeal against the statements made by Boufarra in court and falsified documents to prove the case against him. According to Boufarra, this led to the elimination of the verdict that was given in the courthouse in Oujda and finally to his definitive discharge.

According to Boufarra, he was kidnapped by Moroccan authorities and tortured in the secret detention center of the DGST in Temara. For a period of 23 days he experienced the worst days of his life during which he was subjected to systematic tortures: electric shocks on the head, waterboarding, being filmed naked, rape intimidations, the insertion of plastic and wooden objects in his anus, hanging while being forced to drink water mixed with soap and chlorine, forced sleep deprivation etc. This kidnap took place 5 days before his leave permit would be activated. In case he talked about the happenings in Temara he would be killed and it would be untruthfully stated and messaged that he would have left Morocco to cover his case. This has been done many times with previous cases.

In the year of 2013, Boufarra fled to Europe where he requested asylum and where he still resides until this day.

Charging high functionaries

Abdellatif Hammouchi director of the DGSN and DGST

The ex-police officer reported that he has access to proof to not only make a judicial case against the King of Morocco Mohamed VI but also the kings councillor Fouad Ali El Himma, the kings private secretary Mounir El Majjdi, director of police (DGSN) and secret service (DGST) Abdellatif Hammouchi, director of the DGED secret service Mohamed Yassine Mansouri, director of the judicial police and the Interpol bureau in Morocco Mohammed Dkhissi, president of the Tanger-Al Hoceima region and general secretary of the PAM party Ilyas El Omari, the regional chief of the domestic secret service (DGST) in Oujda Mohamed Zah Eddine, head of commission of the internal affairs secret service (DGST) Mohamed Alaoui and the commissioner of police (DGSN) in Oujda Abdellah Bellahfid.

Boufarra has made it clear he will sue the three people that have personally tortured him.

The King of Morocco

Mohamed Yassine Mansouri director of the DGED

It is highly unlikely that a DGED (Moroccan Foreign Secret service) director can decide on the execution of a ‘target take-out’ located in a foreign country on his own. Such an operation must be negotiated with the total executive body of the Safety Council. This body is the main panel that deals with al security-related operations linked to Morocco.

In article 54 of the Moroccan constitution, the creation of a Safety Council was incorporated in 2011 and organized as an advisory body to be focused on domestic and foreign strategies concerning crisis management and supervision to make sure the correct safety policies were executed by civil servants in function of the Moroccan state. The king of Morocco himself, Mohamed VI is the head of the Safety Council.

Source:https://medium.com/@AmazighInformatieCentrum/gemartelde-ex-politieofficier-wil-aangifte-doen-tegen-de-koning-van-marokko-a3ad9d0fd7ff

Translated by: Najat M.

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