You are legitimizing allegations whispered to you by people who seek to paint a dismal picture of the human rights situation in the Kingdom, regardless of the fact that these individuals are being prosecuted for rape.
“I would like to react to an article published in the” Letters from readers “section of the Washington Post, and this, as a Moroccan citizen, former university professor and in my capacity as General Delegate for the prison administration and reintegration in Morocco.
I got to know you through your famous book The Commander of the Faithful that I received as a gift – while I was still a high school student in Marrakech – from Sally Cameroon, Peace Corps volunteer and English teacher.
At that time, I was a brilliant student of English often in contact with four other teachers, namely Gael Rhabin, a Franco-Briton, Geoffrey O’Cain, an Irishman, Mrs Stephany Sweet, a British teacher who became consul general in Tangier and Sally Cameroon from Pennsylvania. I made a great effort to understand your book as I did with Thus spoke Zarathustra the Nietzsche.
At the time, I found your book to be very enlightening and it helped me understand aspects of my own society from a different perspective. At the same time, as a teenager, I was subjected to other ideological influences through our teachers of philosophy, literature and history. The effect was so obvious that when I graduated from high school (Baccalaureate), I got a scholarship to study in the United States, an offer I declined because I didn’t want to be under it. influence of an imperialist capitalist state!
The result was guaranteed because less than three years later, I found myself in prison for belonging to a Marxist-Leninist student movement.
I have always held in esteem your work, which I have read over and over again along with that of Jacques Berque, Paul Pascon, David Hart, I. William Zartman and Rémi Leveau, among other intellectuals considered to be the founding fathers of Moroccan studies.
Your interference in cases brought before the Moroccan justice surprised me. You have fallen so low that you will go unnoticed.
You certainly overestimate the professional worth of the two so-called journalists. You identify one of them as an investigative journalist who allegedly worked on corruption cases. Paradoxically, however, the Moroccan public, which is always attentive to corruption cases brought to justice, is not aware of such cases reported by this person.
Concerning the other individual, known for a few editorials in a Moroccan newspaper, and who has no training or diploma, he published articles sponsored by partisan activists who espouse a certain doctrine.
In your article, you claim that the two detainees “did not violate Moroccan law”, linking their prosecution to alleged journalistic investigations into major corruption cases. I am amazed that a professor of your caliber comes to such a conclusion.
You are legitimizing allegations whispered to you by people who seek to paint a dismal picture of the human rights situation in the Kingdom, regardless of the fact that these individuals are being prosecuted for rape. Worse yet, by doing so, you are trampling not only on the rights of other parties to the lawsuits, but you are also showing unjustified contempt for Moroccan justice.
For what you call the “hunger strike”, I am thinking of cases such as those of IRA activists who died after observing a hunger strike, like the late Bobby Sands, or the Moroccan left movement in the United States. 1970s, as the late Saida Mnebhi, as well as other Palestinian activists.
Looking at current cases, do you consider anyone who eats honey, dates and other tonics to be a hunger strike ?! Attached is a tweet from the wife of one of these detainees who has always denied having received honey, dates and tonics.
In conclusion, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the country which you have described as an ally of the United States and a “remarkable country” and which could serve as a “beacon for its region” is an independent state endowed with a strict separation of powers and that its judicial system is mature enough to rule freely on the cases submitted to it, without receiving lessons from other countries which loudly demand the independence of the judiciary.
That said, I am defending the right to a fair trial of the two detainees in question and of anyone, whether in Morocco or elsewhere. “
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