By Safaa Kasraoui
By Safaa Kasraoui
Rabat – The National Council of Human Rights (CNDH) organized on Tuesday a symposium on pre-trial detention, which leads to overcrowding in prisons.
At roundtable discussions, meetings and press conferences, authorities debated possible strategies to decrease the rate of pre-trial detention and alleviate the strain on prison resources.
Pre-trial detention has had extremely damaging effects on the Moroccan judicial system.
According to The General Delegation to Prison Administration and Reintegration (DGAPR), 32,160prisoners behind bars are awaiting trials, representing 40 percent of the total number of prisoners in Morocco.
Casablanca’s Regional Director of Prison Administration and Reintegration, Hassan Hmina, said that 17,570 persons were detained in pre-trial custody in Casablanca throughout the previous year, roughly 55 percent of the city’s prison population at the time.
Representative of the Public Prosecution Jamal Zennouri said that Moroccan courts consider these figures ‘reasonable’. He added that during 2016, 16.19 percent of prisoners were detained awaiting trials in Casablanca’s court of first instance, claiming these numbers are very normal.
The General Delegate of the Prison Administration and Reintegration, Mohamed Saleh Tamek,confirmed that the proportion of remanded prisoners is constantly increasing, calling on authorities to intervene and implement alternative measures to pre-trial detention.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Justice and Freedoms promulgated a court efficiency act, proposing a set of new measures to minimize the usage of pre-trial detention and make it an exception, not the norm.
