The Moroccan authorities arrested the former Moroccan Minister of Human Rights Mohamed Ziane on Monday and transferred him to prison to serve a three-year sentence for eleven crimes, including "insulting institutions" and "sexual harassment", confirmed by a Rabat court. .
Ziane, 79, was arrested at his law office in downtown Rabat and transferred to El Arjat II prison, on the outskirts of the Moroccan capital. The former Moroccan minister, who also has Spanish nationality, has directed harsh criticism of the Moroccan state, the country's monarchy and security institutions in recent months.
The former Minister of Human Rights, who held office between 1995 and 1996, was sentenced last February to three years in prison by a court of first instance in Rabat for "contempt for judicial decisions" and for "disseminating false information for the defamation of persons through electronic means", among other crimes.
The sentence also includes a fine of about 500 euros and compensation to civil parties. In addition, he is also sentenced for "adultery", "giving a minor a bad example", "insulting judges and public officials", "helping a person to leave the national territory clandestinely" and "hiding a criminal".
On November 14, Ziane denounced that the Moroccan authorities prohibited him from leaving the country at the airport, a prohibition that, according to legal sources consulted by EFE at the time, responded to a judicial precautionary measure due to the investigations he had open.
The sentence comes after Ziane published a video on social networks at the end of September in which he criticized "the absence of King Mohamed VI" of Morocco and called for the monarch's abdication in favor of his son Crown Prince Muley Hassan, of 19 years. Days later, the lawyer again directed the same criticism of the monarch in an interview with the Spanish digital medium "El Independiente".
Mohamed Ziane represented the Moroccan government under the reign of Hassan II -from 1961 to 1999- in highly publicized political matters. In 1996 he was appointed Minister of Human Rights. But in 2017, after the eruption of "Hirak", a wave of popular protests in the Rif region of northern Morocco, the former minister began to publicly criticize the government's security statements and decisions. He then became the lawyer for the main representative of the protests and adopted a critical tone with the State.
In social networks, some users have used the label
