BC NEWS
By The Associated Press
Morocco slammed the U.S. State Department’s report on human rights in the North African kingdom as a list of inventions and even lies.
The official MAP news agency on Tuesday quoted the Interior Ministry as saying the report’s content is “truly scandalous.”
Morocco is an important U.S. ally in a volatile region, particularly valuable for its help in the fight against terrorism, making its irate, public reaction to last month’s report highly unusual.
The report’s contents “went from approximation of information to pure and simple invention, from erroneous appreciation to lies,” MAP quoted the ministry as saying. It denounced the sources used to compile the report as “unreliable” and “politically hostile.”
The State Department issues a country-by-country report each year on human rights around the world.
The latest report, issued April 13, listed corruption and widespread disregard by security forces for the rule of law as two significant ongoing problems in Morocco.
Interior Minister Mohamed Hassad has met with U.S. Ambassador Dwight Bush about the report, and “technical working sessions” with embassy officials have been held, the ministry said. Apparently to no avail.
“Morocco wants no more evasive responses, but precise case by case answers,” he said.
Morocco is obliged “to explore all possible paths” to uncover the report’s errors and “is prepared to go to the end,” not excluding taking its case to the “highest authorities in the different national American institutions.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby rejected the criticism of the report by Morocco.
“The Department of State stands by the information contained in the 2015 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Morocco,” Kirby said.
Among other things, the lengthy State Department report said that “systematic and pervasive corruption undermined law enforcement and the effectiveness of the judicial system,” adding that “impunity was pervasive” with no official data about prosecution or punishment of officials committing abuses.
It also said decisions at trials touching on politically sensitive issues like the monarchy, security and Islamas it pertains to political life “appeared predetermined.”
While reports of disappearances and torture, widespread in the 1970s and 1980s, have eased, the State Department report noted a 2014 report by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention citing “sources deemed to be credible” saying that disappearances have continued.
While torture is constitutionally forbidden, the State Department report quoted an Amnesty International review claiming that “an array of torture techniques are used by Moroccan security forces to extract confessions … silence activists and crush dissent.”
The Interior Ministry, as quoted by MAP, questioned the credibility of a report prepared in Washington and based on reports submitted by “a few individuals with no credibility or a handful of Moroccans known for years for their aversion to the regime.”
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Associated Press writer Elaine Ganley in Paris contributed to this report.
