Belgian-Moroccan Man Alleges Torture During 12-Year Imprisonment in Morocco

"The conditions of detention in isolation are very hard to accept, especially for an innocent person. The hardest thing is to be between these four walls, and all your grievances, all your requests, are trampled upon; there you feel abandoned," says RTBF Ali Aarrass, whose judicial history began on April 1, 2008, the date of his arrest in Ceuta, at the request of the Moroccan authorities. Accused of arms trafficking on behalf of a jihadist terrorist organization, he was extradited to Morocco and sentenced to 15 years in prison, after spending more than a year and a half in prison in Madrid and obtaining a dismissal from the Spanish justice system.

"If there is someone I should be angry with, it is the Spanish government which was complicit with Morocco. And when I talk about Morocco, I’m talking about King Mohammed VI and the Director General of National Security, Abdellatif Hammouchi. They are responsible for the abject tortures that were inflicted on me," said the Belgian-Moroccan, who recalls that his confessions were obtained under the acts of torture suffered during his stay at the detention center of the Directorate General of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) in Témara. "After four days of torture where I never stopped proclaiming my innocence, I told myself that I had to invent something. We cannot say that these are confessions. It is impossible to resist these horrible, abominable, inhuman acts of torture. With these techniques, they will always end up winning," he denounces.

A video shot by a guard at the Moroccan prison of Salé 2 in 2012 and published by Ali Aarras’ family and lawyers in 2015, suggests that Ali Aarras was a victim of ill-treatment. This is confirmed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, after a medical examination of the marks of blows on Ali’s body. The trial of Ali was not fair and his confessions were obtained under torture, also denounced the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, calling on the Moroccan authorities to open an investigation. According to the Moroccan Ambassador to Belgium, Mohamed Ameur, "the public prosecutor ordered a medical examination on Ali Aarras, which concluded that there was no trace or lesion with regard to accusations of torture." For Ali Aarrass’ lawyer, Christophe Marchand, the investigation conducted by the Moroccan authorities was "botched" and did not lead to any prosecution "because the Moroccan state stubbornly refuses to face reality".

"Ali Aarrass is a jihadist who is creating a diversion. He was the explosives expert of the Moujahidine group, who put his expertise in weapons at the service of the group because he was a former Belgian army. He was the one who ensured the financing of the group [...] and introduced dozens of weapons into Morocco with the intention of carrying out attacks," says Mohamed Ameur, who assures that Aarrass’ guilt is established.

Released on April 2, 2020, in the midst of the health crisis, Ali Aarrass had to wait several weeks in Morocco before obtaining authorization to return to Belgium where he currently lives, surrounded by his family and loved ones.