[AnNahar] Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Morocco of holding a dual Belgian-Moroccan citizen in "inhuman" and "abusive solitary detention" for more than three years following his 2009 life sentence on terrorism charges.Abdelkader Belliraj
| ...age 60, and member of the Algerian jihadi group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) since at least the 1980s, for which he murdered six Jews and an imam in Belgium. GSPC pledged to Al Qaeda in 2007, while Mr. Belliraj rose to lead a 35-man cell, which plotted assassinations of senior officials and strikes against Jewish targets in Morocco while merrily robbing in Europe. Mr. Belliraj was granted Belgian citizenship in 2000, the same year the blissfully unaware Belgian intelligence service recruited him as a paid informant... |
His wife told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that since 2016 Belliraj had been confined to a cell for 23 hours a day and deprived of contact with other inmates, which the watchdog said would contravene United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
standards on the treatment of prisoners.
Moroccan prison authorities did not respond to AFP's request for comment. The New York-based rights group said it contacted Morocco's Inter-Ministerial Delegation for Human Rights in November but received no substantive response from it or prison authorities.
Belliraj, whose sentence was confirmed on appeal in 2010, was also accused of committing six murders in Belgium in the 1980s and 1990s, which he denied. His wife Rachida Hatti lives in Belgium and is allowed to speak to him regularly on the phone.
He was arrested in February 2008 with a number of other people, allegedly in possession of a large arsenal of firearms.
Despite protestations of innocence, Belliraj was convicted in a mass trial alongside 34 co-accused, among them politicians of moderate Islamist parties.
Some of their sentences were later reduced on appeal and eight -- including six moderate Islamists -- were later pardoned by the king.
HRW said eight of the convicted men are still serving their sentences.
The 2009 trial was criticized for violating the rights of the accused. According to HRW, Belliraj's conviction was based on confessions which he and his co-defendants said were obtained under torture.
"It is bad enough when a man gets a life sentence as the result of a miscarriage of justice, but keeping him in inhuman prison conditions for years is like twisting the knife," said HRW's acting Middle East and North Africa director Eric Goldstein.
"Belliraj and all prisoners in Morocco should be treated humanely, and that includes having daily contact with other human beings."