Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Rabat – The attorney general at the Tangier Court of Appeals decided to detain a Quran teacher for indecent sexual assault against six minors.
The prosecutor announced on Saturday that the suspect appeared before the court after receiving two complaints that man sexually assaulted six minors in Fahs-Anjra, a province in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region.
“It was decided to request an investigation for suspicion of indecent assault on minors with violence and suspicion of indecent assault on minors, resulting in a defloration committed by a religious worker,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
The investigating judge at the Tangier Court of Appeals ordered the detention of the suspect at the local Tangier 1 prison.
The investigation falls under Articles 485, 487, and 488 of Morocco’s penal code.
Article 485 of Morocco’s penal code stipulates that “if a [violent] crime was committed against a child or someone under the age of eighteen, an incapacitated person, a handicapped person, or a person known for his weak mental capacities, the culprit is punished with imprisonment for 10 to 20 years.”
The Quran teacher’s sexual assaults reportedly started seven years. One of the victims, a student at the Quranic school, finally unveiled her story that she kept as a secret out of fear.
Local media quoted the mothers of the victims, who said that their daughters were threatened by the “fkih” repeatedly.
The revelation made national headlines amid anger and outrage due to the increase of pedophilia cases in Morocco.
The arrest of the Quran teacher comes in the wake of the case of Adnane, an 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in cold blood.
Morocco arrested Adnane’s killer, who is now in custody along with three other men for not reporting the crime.
Lawyers and activists raised the tone against the crimes, calling on the government to intensify efforts to combat pedophilia in Morocco.
Stephanie Willman Bordat, an international human rights lawyer, recently told Morocco World News that activists should take actions to fight pedophilia.
“You have to get the hell out of social media, and you have to do the hard work of engaging locally with local system people, like police, gendarmes, prosecutors,” she said.
She also called for a detailed legal framework in the laws dealing with child abuse.
Criminal laws in Morocco only say “this is the crime and it is punished by how many years of prison and that is the end of the process.”
“The real problem is that the law does not create a framework or say anything about all of the steps in the process before that gets you to the conviction. There is nothing in the law or regulations about reporting the crimes.”
