A royal birth followed immediately by an amnesty for more than a dozen death-row prisoners, among others, is being interpreted in Morocco as a signal that the country is on the verge of making history in the Arab world by being the first to abolish the death penalty.
On February 28, the wife of King Mohammed VI, Princess Lalla Salma, gave birth to the ruling couple’s first daughter, Princess Lalla Khadija. Immediately afterwards, Morocco’s Minister of Justice, Mohamed Bouzouba, appeared on nationwide television announcing the biggest royal pardon yet for almost 9 000 prisoners, including 14 people sentenced to death.
Reading from an ”official communiqué”, the minister repeated several times that this amnesty included people on the death row. This was taken as a clear sign here that the king supported abolition of the death penalty.
Abolition near
The royal message to the Moroccan people was underlined by the minister’s unusual appearance on television in traditional Moroccan attire. It was also a signal that the day of the formal abolition of the death penalty in Morocco is fast approaching.
The final decision to abolish the death penalty will be taken by the Moroccan Parliament. But the king, who appoints his prime minister and other key ministers, would have to give his support for such a crucial change to the state’s existing constitutional and legal system.
At the Third World Congress against the Death Penalty in Paris last February, the head of Morocco’s state-appointed consultative committee on human rights, Ben Zekri, confirmed there was a general consensus among MPs to end capital punishment.
The Moroccan press has speculated that a parliamentary vote will be taken on the issue in the current parliamentary session, which ends in June. A Bill to abolish the death penalty has already been drawn up and put before the government. The king has also set up a special legal commission that is working on the task of removing capital punishment from the country’s legal code.
Since 1993, Morocco has operated a moratorium on the death penalty — one of about 20 African countries that have not carried out executions for more than 10 years. Since its independence from the French in 1956, more than 500 people are believed to have been executed, either after court sentencing or extra-judicially. Before the latest amnesty, human rights campaigners said there were 131 people on death row.
Opponents of the death penalty worldwide hope that Morocco’s removal of the death penalty from its statute books will set an example to North African and Middle Eastern states. None of the 22 states in the region has yet abolished the death penalty. Saudi Arabia and Iran execute more than 100 every year.
Progress boosted
Morocco’s steady progress along the road to abolition of the death penalty was given a major boost with the final report of the equity and reconciliation committee in 2005. This recommended the abolition of the death penalty as a measure for strengthening the judicial and political reforms carried out since King Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne in 1999.
The committee, headed by Driss Benzekri, a close adviser to the king, investigated grave violations of human rights committed between the granting of independence and 1999. It organised public hearings that were broadcast on national television, something unheard of in the Arab world.
Moroccan television has also played a major role in the public debate on the death penalty. Last October, the national coalition against the death penalty organised a debate on capital punishment at the headquarters of the lawyers’ club in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. This was televised nationally.
Later a documentary on the death penalty was also broadcast on television. Nothing like this had ever been produced and shown in an Arab country, one delegate to the recent Paris World Congress against the Death Penalty said.
The documentary appears to have convinced some people to switch from supporting the death penalty to becoming abolitionists.
”After watching the programme, I changed my mind,” said Keltoume Arrouf, a lawyer’s assistant. The recent videos showing the execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein made her even more staunchly anti-death penalty.
”Saddam Hussein was executed on the day of Eid al-Adha. That was such a terrible scene that I still see it in my dreams,” she said.
‘Wrong approach’
Not all of Morocco’s predominantly Muslim population have been won over by the arguments of the abolitionists. Many still find justification for capital punishment in the Qur’an and sacred texts. Some members of Morocco’s legal profession would also not like any change in the law.
”The abolitionists have the wrong approach to the right to life,” said Mohamed Chemssy, a lawyer. ”This right cannot be used to defend someone who has deprived another of precisely this right. Those who support abolition cannot only consider the criminal. They must also consider the families of the victims.”
He added: ”The death penalty cannot be tied to democracy, dictatorship, Islam or to any other religion. It is tied to justice. We do not need to abolish the death penalty. We need to guarantee fair trials for all and an independent judiciary that would give fair sentences no matter what the punishment.”
But Ahmed Kouza, a doctor and Amnesty International activist, takes an opposite view.
”Abolition would improve the image of this country and help reinforce respect for human rights where the right to life comes first of all,” he said. ”Death-penalty sentences and executions have never stopped crime anywhere.”
Judicial mistakes can never be ruled out. The emphasis should be on reforming criminals and returning them to society. ”As Muslims, we believe that only God gives life and death,” he added.
Even as the debate goes on with a clear indication that abolition of the death penalty in Morocco is only months away, judges here continue to adjudicate death sentences. In February, a court in Rabat sentenced a Moroccan, Karim Zimach, to death for the killing of an Italian diplomat and his Belgian wife.
Such sentences should not be interpreted as Morocco having any second thoughts about the issue, Chemssy said. ”It’s absolutely certain the death penalty will be abolished because the state needs this politically,” he stated. — IPS