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Rabat – The Rabat administrative court has delivered its final verdict in the Hayat Belkacem vs. Royal Moroccan Navy case, ordering the Moroccan navy to pay compensation to Belkacem’s family after she died from a Moroccan Navy gun wound in September of last year.
Far-Maroc, an online platform focused on military and security affairs in Morocco, reported that the Moroccan navy was ordered to pay Belkacem’s family MAD 150,000 in compensation.
The court’s verdict comes more than a year after Hayat Belkacem’s death triggered waves of indignation and social outrage against a heavy-handed anti-migration intervention.
Belkacem, a 20-year old law student from Tetouan in Northern Morocco, was fatally hit by a Moroccan navy bullet as she and three other Moroccans tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Spain on a go-fast boat.
According to critics of the Moroccan government, she symbolized the youth in the “other” and “invisible” Morocco for whom leaving the north African country is the only alternative.
In an emotional interview in the aftermath of her death, the young woman’s Belkacem’s mother wept and said that her daughter’s dream was to migrate and find a job to support her family.
She explained that her daughter had sacrificed her education and dropped out of college, Abdelmalek Essaadi University of Law, to save her family from poverty.
Meanwhile, Belkacem’s father, who said he did not know about her plan to migrate to Spain, called the government’s attention to his impoverished family and asked for compensation for his daughter’s death.
