Tags: Morocco, Mohamed Ziane, ex-minister, embezzlement,
Former Moroccan minister and lawyer Mohamed Ziane, who has been serving a three-year prison sentence since November 2022 for eleven offenses, is facing a new trial for embezzlement, accused of not having returned money from a election campaign.
Ziane, aged 82, was transferred this Friday from Arjat I prison (on the outskirts of Rabat) to the Rabat Court of Appeal to attend a session of the trial, informed his son and lawyer, Ali Reda Ziane , at EFE.
Born in Malaga, Ziane was Minister of Human Rights between 1995 and 1996 and has dual nationality, Spanish and Moroccan.
According to his lawyer, Ziane is accused of not having returned 1 million dirhams (around 100,000 euros) of the money that had been granted to him as a subsidy for his party, the Moroccan Liberal Party, for an electoral campaign, following of a complaint filed by another lawyer and member of the political party, Ishaq Charia.
During the hearing, his lawyer explained, Ziane asked to speak twice, once to affirm that he is innocent and another to question the arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office against his lawyer’s request for freedom.
Ali Reda Ziane assured EFE that around a hundred Moroccan lawyers from different regions of the country went to the Rabat court to support his client, a circumstance reflected in the daily Lakome by showing a photo of the lawyers posing in gowns in front of the door of the court.
Ziane was sentenced in November 2022 for “insulting judges and public officials”, “giving a bad example to children”, “inciting people to violate measures to prevent the spread of covid”, “spreading false information”, “ helping a person to leave the national territory illegally” and “adultery”, among other charges.
The ex-minister was critical of King Mohamed VI and Amnesty International denounced in its latest annual report on human rights that Ziane is part of a group of six people sentenced in Morocco for “having exercised peacefully their right to freedom of expression. EFE
#Morocco #MohamedZiane #exminister
