Jailed Moroccan Protest Leader Hospitalized After Hunger Strike

"My son who is on a hunger strike had a hypoglycemic episode by drinking unsweetened water because the mixture makes him nauseous," Ahmed Zefzafi, Nasser Zefzafi’s father, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo last Wednesday, adding that he would have been found unconscious on the floor by a guard who was going to inform him of his lawyer’s visit.

The leader of the Rif movement is demanding, among other things, the detention of all Rif political prisoners in the same place and the improvement of their incarceration conditions. In a statement published on this subject on Friday, February 12, the General Directorate of Penitentiary Administration and Reintegration stated that it was aware of this decision of the detainees, who did not give the reasons for it.

However, Nasser Zefzafi, with another activist sentenced to 10 years in prison for the same reasons, "have announced that they will not renounce their decision and that they refuse to dialogue with any party" although the prison administration has granted some of their demands. Thus, "the delegation fully discharges itself from the health effects that this senseless behavior could have," the statement concluded.

Several other detainees in various detention centers have joined the hunger strike movement. As for Nasser’s father, he is pleading, through a video posted on Facebook, for a royal pardon for the 24 members of the movement who have already served a good part of their sentence. "We have nowhere to go. Our children claimed their rights and not secession," Nasser’s mother added.