Moroccan Environmental Activist Seeks Royal Pardon After Cedar Trafficking Exposé

Mohamed Attaoui’s troubles began the day he was fired from his job and filed a complaint with the court against the president of the Tounfite commune. But instead of returning to his duties, he found himself behind bars for a ten-year-old case in which he had been found guilty in a bribery story.

Actor and activist engaged in the fight for environmental protection in Tounfite, Mohamed Attaoui, 54, particularly defended the cedar by denouncing the mafias that were abusively exploiting this protected national heritage.

Mohamed Benata, an environmentalist and president of the rural commune of Anemzi, near the commune of Tounfite, denounced in a video posted on Facebook "the degradation of the cedar forest by the mafia, with the complicity of the forestry service. For him, Mohamed Attaoui’s action is legitimate and requires the intervention of the King’s Prosecutor to launch an investigation on this subject," reports Hespress.

For the defense of Mohamed Attaoui, videos are circulating on social networks. Several dozen associations in Morocco and elsewhere are demanding his release and imploring an intervention by King Mohammed VI. Ahmed Hamid, a member of the Moroccan Association of Life and Earth Sciences Teachers (ASEVT), denounces the damage caused by the clandestine felling of the Atlas cedar, a millennium-old tree that covers 134,000 hectares of forests in Morocco. Wood traffickers, attracted by its high market value, take advantage of the lack of resources invested in its preservation.