Rabat – The public prosecutor’s office issued a statement on Tuesday, November 5, emphasizing that it is ready to re-investigate claims of torture made by detained Hirak movement leader Nasser Zefzafi.
A leaked recording made by Zefzafi has gone viral on social media. In the recording, Zefzafi claimed he was subject to “torture” and inhumane conditions during his arrest.
The General Delegation for Prison Administration and Reintegration (DGAPR) denied that detainees held at the Ras El Ma prison in Fez were subject to “any ill-treatment.”
During his arrest, Zefzafi made not mention of having been subject to “indecent assault,” the public prosecutor said.
The statement added that during his first appearance before the public prosecutor’s office on June 5 207, the detainee said he “suffered only violence at the time of his arrest in Al Hoceima.”
The statement added that the injuries he sustained were “minor wounds observed on his body, which were recorded within the minutes of his arrest.”
The public prosecutor added that Zefzafi sustained injuries due to “his fierce and violent resistance at the time of arrest by security services.”
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The statement added that the detainee had said that the judicial security services who conducted the investigation “had treated him well and had not subjected him to any violence or torture during the interrogation process.”
However, Zefzai told the judge at the first instance court that he had been the subject of an “indecent assault attempt.”
In the statement, the public prosecutor recalled that a medical examination conducted on June 8, 2017, showed that the Hirak activist “had not been subjected to any aggression, rape, or indecent assault.”
The statement added that the injuries he sustained, “as recorded in the judicial police report, go back to the date of his arrest on May 29, 2017.”
Police arrested Zefzafi, among other protestors, in Al Hoceima for driving the emergence of the Hirak movement. Protests took off after the death of fishmonger Mohcine Fikri in October 2016.
Zefzafi led the movement, with protests sweeping the al Hoceima region calling for social justice and condemning social disparities.
The prosecutor’s office ordered Zefzafi’s arrest in May 2017 after he interrupted a prayer sermon inside the Mohammed V mosque in Al Hoceima.
Zefzafi, along with three other detainees, is serving a 20 year prison sentence for “undermining the security of the state.”
