Morocco: Sham Inquiry Highlights Impunity for Police Abuse

The two Sahrawi human rights advocates, Dahha Rahmouni and Brahim al-Ansari, say that, in December 2007, police in the city of El-Ayoun, in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, arbitrarily arrested and beat them before releasing them without charge. Human Rights Watch is making public today the mens formal complaints [Rahmouni's complaint, in Arabic and Ansari's complaint, in Arabic] and additional evidence indicating that authorities did not conduct a credible investigation into the incident before announcing the end of the probe on May 5.  
 
A real, impartial investigation would have included testimony from both the police officers accused of abuse and the rights advocates making the allegations, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Instead, Moroccan authorities chose to hear only one side, showing theyre not impartial.  
 
Since submitting their complaints to the office of the prosecutor at the El-Ayoun Court of Appeals in January 2008, the only contact the two men have had from Moroccan authorities came on May 5, when police informed them that the prosecutor at the El-Ayoun Court of Appeals had closed the investigation into their complaints for lack of evidence.  
 
Police made the men sign a one-page document to this effect, but refused their request for a copy.  

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