Moroccan Judges’ Club Clashes with Judiciary Council over Free Speech and Disciplinary Actions

"The objective of the procedures in question is to target the Club of Moroccan Judges and this, for its clear reformist line consisting in calling things by their name," declared its executive office during a meeting held on November 27. Exasperated, the club published a note on November 28 in which it charges the CSPJ. It says it has noted with "great concern the trajectory of the procedures initiated by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary".

It denounces the "unjustified delay" of the procedure concerning publications dating from June 2018 and recalls that the council had in the meantime terminated this same procedure. Unexpectedly, this resumed full force in July 2020. In the eyes of the club, the incriminated publications in no way undermine the Institution of Justice. Armed with these findings, the authors of the note recall the "instructions" of King Mohammed VI, also president of this council: the institution has a duty to "definitively protect itself from any corporatist or narrow electoral conflict as well as any tendentious practice".

In less than three years of existence, the CSPJ (its ancestor was the Supreme Council of the Judiciary) is facing its first crisis. Adopting a position of intransigence, the association is studying actions that will be presented to the National Assembly meeting in December. It intends to organize a press conference in the coming days to highlight "certain manifestations of the constraints exerted on the associative action of the Club". It also wants to set up a defense committee to legally assist the prosecuted judges.

For the club, the freedom of expression of judges and their independence are inseparable. It therefore calls on all judges to "vigorously defend" their right "within the framework of the law".