Rabat – Agadir’s Court of First Instance has sparked outrage and shock in Morocco after sentencing five adult men to 12 months in prison after repeatedly gang-raping and impregnating a 15-year-old girl in a town near the southern city of Tata.
The court issued the verdict in March 2022, sentencing the rapists on charges of “indecent assault on a minor.”
The verdict triggered renewed shock and frustration among the victim’s family, as well as human rights activists who accused the Moroccan judicial system of leniency towards rapists.
The incident dates back to 2021, when the victim, Fatima Zahra, was sexually assaulted by six men, including her coach in a local football team.
“Investigations led to the identification of a main suspect, who is the girl’s coach in a local football team, as well as five other men who also raped her,” Fatima Zahra’s uncle, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
Authorities had arrested five of the suspects, four of whom served a one-year sentence at the Ait Melloul prison, while the other –a minor– spent eight months in juvenile detention.
Meanwhile, the sixth suspect is still on the run, according to local reports.
Frustrated with the light sentence that the court has issued, Fatima Zahra’s uncle described the verdict as “unjust and illogical.”
He added that his niece, who is now the mother to an eight-month-old child, was in an “unimaginable state” due to the traumatizing incident.
The appeal trial against the five men will start on Wednesday at the Agadir Court of Appeal, with Fatima Zahra’s family calling for “justice to be served.”
Not the first time
Fatima Zahra’s case comes weeks after a similar incident occurred in the city of Tiflet. It involved three men who had been found guilty of raping and impregnating 11-year-old girl Sanae, but received light sentences of only two years in prison.
The light sentences triggered nationwide condemnation and uproar, with associations, activists, and public figures calling for the reopening of the trial.
In addition, Morocco’s Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi said he was “shocked” at the sentence.
Read also: Tiflet Rape Case: Minister Ouahbi Points Out Lapses in Moroccan Criminal Law
“The rape case of the child struck us all, and made us question, as a society, which measures should we reinforce and implement, on a legislative, intellectual, and educational level, to protect children from rape,” the minister was quoted as saying in local media.
Following widespread condemnation of the sentence, Rabat’s Court of Appeal opened a proceeding against the three men, increasing their sentences to 20 years in prison for one defendant and 10 years for the other two.
The successive incidents have ignited widespread outcry and sparked a debate about the need for urgent reforms in Morocco’s criminal justice system, as well as the larger problem of protecting children from sexual assault.
Critics of the light sentences accused the country’s legal system of normalizing sexual abuse and rape culture.
