Moroccan Court Upholds Controversial Verdict in High-Profile Revenge Porn Case

Initially scheduled for mid-July, the appeal hearing in this case in which Hanaa B. was the victim, in January 2021, of pornographic revenge, resulted in the confirmation of the verdict of one month in prison and a fine of 500 dirhams against the victim. The judge also decided to extend the international arrest warrant against the author of the video.

A bittersweet victory, according to the Hors La Loi collective which had taken up the case, and has provided psychological and financial support to Hanaa. "We are relieved, since Hanaa will not return to prison. She was very afraid of going back there and could not sleep anymore," Ghizlaine Mamouni, the collective’s lawyer, told Médias24, before stressing her dissatisfaction with the judge’s decision to confirm the charges against her client.

After the unauthorized publication of a pornographic video of her, the 24-year-old woman, mother of two children, had been convicted of indecent assault and extramarital sexual relations. This verdict had provoked an outcry among civil society activists who see it as an attack on individual freedoms, denouncing the fact that the author of the video is at large in the Netherlands.

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Since her release from prison on February 3, Hanaa has not been able to withstand the many pressures and various forms of harassment she suffers daily, denounces Karima Nadi, a human rights defender. Hanaa has had a tumultuous and painful past.

Abandoned at birth by her biological mother, she was adopted at a very young age by a modest family in Tetouan. She became a mother for the first time at the age of fourteen after being raped, Karima Nadir confided. "She was alone, the state had to support her psychologically and socially. She should have been placed in an orphanage, and her child could have been adopted by a stable family," pleaded Me Hamidi in the columns of Telquel. The lawyer evoked the responsibility of the State in the turn that the young woman’s life has taken.