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Rabat – Five university professors at Hassan I University in Settat, an hours’ drive from Casablanca, are in line to face the city’s public prosecutor for sexually extorting female students for grades.
Police conducted a primary investigation by interrogating the five law and economic professors directly linked to the sextortion allegations, according to sources.
Three of the professors – the head of the Public Law department, a professor of Political History, and an Economics professor – were brought in for questioning on Thursday and Friday last week.
The two remaining suspects, the coordinator of the university’s Public Finance Law Master’s program and the head of the Economics department, were questioned yesterday.
The professors are facing charges ranging from corruption and sextortion to human trafficking.
The charges are based on leaked conversations between said professors on social media platforms discussing sextortion of female students for extra credits.
The ministry of higher education announced freezing five private law master programs in the wake of the scandal.
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NGOs have ever since called on the president of the Hassan I University to shut down Doctorate Laboratories implicated in similar cases.
This is not an isolated incident, with many university professors from various cities across Morocco having previously sullied the reputation of Morocco’s higher education institutions with similar practices.
In 2017, a professor at Abdelmalek Saadi University in Tetouan was arrested and prosecuted for charges of sextortion.
The same year saw a rise in the number of allegations surrounding sextortion in Moroccan Universities, including Marrakech’s Cadi Ayyad University, one of Morocco’s leading Universities.
In Morocco, sexual harassment is subject to a prison sentence ranging from one month to six months and a fine of MAD 10,000 ($1000).
Sexual harassment is defined as any “act, word, or sign of sexual nature, underlying a sexual purpose.” However, the definition remains too vague, making it virtually impossible to pin charges unless hard proof is provided.
