Rabat – General Secretary of the Justice and Development Party, Abdelilah Benkirane, met with Nasser Zafzafi’s parents in Rabat.
On Monday, Abdelilah Benkirane received the parents of Nasser Zafzafi, the iconic figure the of Hoceima protests who is being prosecuted for endangering “the state’s internal safety,” at his residence in Rabat.
The meeting between the former Head of Government and Zafzafi’s parents was mediated Zafzafi’s lawyer, Mohamed Ziane, who is also the Moroccan Liberal Party’s national coordinator.
Mohammed Ziane gave a brief interview to the press on his way out of the Court of Appeal during which he stated that Benkirane had met Zafzafi’s father before at the inauguration of the Abdelkrim Khattabi Center in Hoceima.
During Monday’s meeting, Zafzafi’s parents demanded their son be released and exchanged points of view about the unrest in Hoceima.
Ziane stated that Benkirane was aware that Zafzafi’s mother called on King Mohammed VI to release her son.
The public prosecutor at Hoceima’s Court of Appeal issued an arrest warrant against Nasser Zafzafi on May 26. This came about after Nasser Zafzafi interrupted the Friday Sermon in the city’s Mohammed V mosque to protest against “the politicization” of the sermon.
Zafzafi’s mother made a video that went viral on social media, where she denied that her son had received money from any “external sources” and called on King Mohammed VI to intervene and release her son.
Tension in Hoceima sprang last October after the death of Mohcine Fikri, a local fishmonger who was accidently crushed in a rubbish truck compactor as he was trying to save his confiscated stock of fish from being destroyed.
This sparked a wave of protests throughout the city and the neighboring villages that gradually picked up steam.
The government headed by Saad Eddine Othmani validated these calls for reforms on multiple occasions, most recently in a communiqué issued by the government coalition on May 31 where it stated:
“The majority parties of the government have again stressed the right of protests to express legitimate social demands in accordance with legal procedures.”
Prior to that, a high-level ministerial delegation headed to Hoceima on May 22 to convey a “clear message from the government towards the legitimate and realistic demands of the citizens in the province of Hoceima,” according to Morocco’s Minister of Interior, Abdelouafi Laftit.
