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A Casablanca court of appeal has confirmed prison sentences of up to 20 years for dozens of activists linked to the Hirak protest movement that rocked the Rif region in northern Morocco, at the end of 2016.
The decision handed down Friday against 42 protesters sparked shouts of "corrupt state" on the part of relatives of the defendants.
The leader of the Al-Hirak al-Shaabi People's Movement, Nbader Zefzafi, and three other men, had their 20-year prison sentence confirmed for threatening the security of the state.
Zefzafi, 39, was arrested in May 2017 after organizing protests in his predominantly Amazigh hometown, Al Hoceima, on economic and social issues.
"There is no hope … this lawsuit is unfair from the beginning and it is so that it has ended," said L & # 39; defense lawyer, Souad Brahma.
State Attorney Mohamed Al Houssaini Karut, however, said the court had upheld the verdict "since there was nothing new to consider after the defendants and their lawyers refrained from attending the hearings ".
The court was "lenient" in sentencing Zefzafi to 20 years in prison because he had been tried on charges punishable by up to 30 years, he said. .
The other sentences upheld on appeal ranged from one to fifteen years. Eleven others were pardoned last year by King Mohammed VI of Morocco.
Hamid el Mahdaoui, a journalist, was sentenced to three years in prison for failing to inform the police that weapons had been offered to him during the demonstrations, which he described as "an imaginary crime." ".
"It's an injustice," said his wife to the AFP news agency.
The predominantly ethnic region of the Berber Rif has long had a strained relationship with the central authorities of Morocco and was at the heart of the events inspired by the Arab Spring in 2011.
The main protests abated following a series of political reforms, including constitutional changes that led King Mohammed VI to give up some of his extensive powers.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
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