In a voice weakened by the hunger strike he began on 3 April - the day he learned at Rabat airport that he was not allowed to leave the country at the invitation of the Sorbonne University in Paris - Maati Monjib describes the political and legal ordeal he has been subjected to for five years now. His crime ? He is a member of the Moroccan left, calling for a real reform of the monarchy.
Monjib, 63, is a renowned French-Moroccan historian. In July 2024, the King pardoned him on the controversial charges brought against him (in particular that of “money laundering”) as well as those against several journalists and activists. However, this royal decision did not affect his legal case. Thus his suspension from Rabat University, where he taught the political history of contemporary Morocco, remained in force, and his property, including his car and his bank account, remained sequestered. And his situation is all the worse as the monarch’s declining health seems to have reinforced and expanded the room for manoeuvre of the king’s security entourage, embodied by Fouad Ali El Himma (advisor to the King and his friend since childhood), Abdellatif Hammrouchi (head of the political police) and, to a lesser extent, Yassine Mansouri, head of the General Directorate of Studies and Documentation, the equivalent of France’s external security services (DGSE).
Omar Brousky. – What happened when you tried to leave Morocco on Thursday 3 April ?
Maati Monjib.– I arrived at Rabat-Sale airport at around 11 am. I confess I was worried from the first because I saw two “familiar faces”. I’ve known them and they’ve known me for several years now. Nevertheless, I got my boarding pass right away. That made me hopeful. But just as I was heading for passport control, I noticed another “familiar face”. My heart, which is weakened by arrhythmia, began beating faster.
“You’re in the computer”
I handed my passport to a well turned-out policewoman seated behind a thick but transparent sheet of glass. She checked and re-checked my ID. After passing it over an electronic scanner several times, she said: “Nothing doing, sir. You can’t go through. You’re not allowed to leave the country.” I demanded to speak to her supervisor. In just a few seconds, an officer in civilian clothes arrived. I explained to him that a legal ban on leaving the country could not last more than a year. He replied : “I know that, but you’re in the computer.” I replied: “So what?” There was no answer.
I joined my friends the human rights defenders in the airport café. They had come there in solidarity. Among them was Khandija Ryadi, a true soldier of freedom in Morocco, UN Human Rights prize winner in 2013. My voice choked with anger as I told them I was starting a three-day hunger strike, then and there.
O.B.– Why did you decide to go on a hunger strike when your health is poor ? You have diabetes and a heart condition...
M.M.– I am pacifist by nature and have always used peaceful methods: suffering to make myself heard. I have already used up all the legal and political means at my disposal. The most powerful men in the Kingdom - with the exception of the King himself - have been approached by mutual friends. Nothing doing. Always the same accusations which I can summarize thus: “Mister Monjib wants to bring together the Islamists and leftists of all persuasions to bring down the Monarchy. He’s dreaming. But his dream is dangerous. He’s a fattan (seditionist). Besides which, he is practically the only Moroccan to show disrespect for the symbols of the Monarchy...”
For a constitutional monarchy
O.B.– And what do you say to that ?
M.M.– I begin with their last argument. My activism has always been peaceful, in words and writings, in favour of a parliamentary regime which preserves citizens’ rights and freedoms. A regime in which the King reigns but does not govern. It is the only way to reconcile monarchy and democracy. Otherwise it’s despotism, corruption and a rentier economy which prevail. Just look at the way only a few weeks ago, Premier Aziz Akhannouch became both star and stage manager in a grotesque conflict of interests scandal. It has to do with the construction of a huge desalination plant in Casablanca: his family’s holding company was awarded the contract as a public-private partnership1. Besides which, as head of government, he will subsidise this project - his own project - as part of the investment charter. Do you realize ? A head of government signs a huge strategic investment agreement with himself at the same time granting himself a subsidy of several billions on the pretext that he personally doesn’t run his holding. Even in a sci-fi movie, this wouldn’t be plausible.
Not to mention that other conflict of interests and suspicions of insider dealing concerning a gas deposit in Tendara (Eastern Morocco)2. Scandals like that were investigated by an independent journalist, Youssef El Hireche3. As a result, he was sentenced last year to eighteen months in jail4.
Corruption is everywhere in Morocco. It even affects the lower middle classes. The health and education systems are deeply affected. Hence their state of advanced decay. The average secondary school graduate has problems just writing a job application properly. And look how the heads of governing institutions are fired, driven to resign or humiliated when they try to do their work properly. The most recent example dates from last March: Bachir Rachdi, head of the Anti-Corruption Board, was dismissed by the King. Before him, it was Driss Guerraoui, an important economist and an honest man, former director of the Competition Council. His mistake ? He had produced evidence, supported by official documents, that the major petrol distributors, including those that belong to the Prime Minister’s holding company, organised between them, practically in broad daylight, an illegal price-fixing system. They wanted to get around the sizeable drop in state subsidies for that sector, decided under pressure from the street following the “Arab Spring”. The Akhannouch government is on the way to doing away with all the “gains” of the “Moroccan Spring”.
O.B.– Are your possessions still frozen by the Moroccan authorities ?
M.M.– Yes, my bank account has been frozen, and I’m banned from selling my car or my home. That has been going on for over four years now. It’s totally illegal, which is why the judiciary won’t give us any printed document, either to me or my attorneys, which would show that my possessions have been sequestered. In view of the traumatic experience of the “Arab Spring”, these judges under orders don’t want to leave any embarrassing traces. Such restrictions and judicial surveillance measures are judgements which normally should be rendered and announced and a signed copy provided to the defence if requested. None of that has been observed in my case. My attorneys are not even allowed to photocopy my dossier. How can they be expected to prepare my defence ? For that matter, they don’t even need to bother defending me, as my friends joke. And actually, since 2021, my prosecution is at a standstill. The last time I was summoned to appear before the examining magistrate was on 27 January 2021.
O.B.– What is your status with the university ? Did the royal pardon change anything in your legal situation ?
M.M.– I’m still suspended from my position as professor of history at the Mohammed V University in Rabat. I haven’t been taken back although the royal pardon implies the restitution of all my rights as a research professor. It refers explicitly to the case number of the relevant judicial file. Actually I have several suspended court cases... That’s part of their strategy of all-out pressure meant to exhaust those they call “dissidents” in private and “criminals” in their defamatory press.
“Maximum pressure on society”
O.B.– How do you explain this ferocious campaign against you ?
M.M.– Against me and a few other people critical of the regime, like Fouad Abdelmounni, Omar Radi, Soulaiman Raissouni or the poetess Saida Alamo –I call it “economical repression”. It has been devised by the political police and is aimed at achieving two objectives which are hard to reconcile but have been relatively successful : exercising maximum control over society through quantitatively minimal repression. For example, putting as few people in jail as possible while exerting maximum pressure on society as a whole: multiple legal proceedings, pressure on families and friends, defamation (in my case, this despicable tool of “governance à la marocaine” took the form of several hundred defamatory articles each month, and in Radi’s case as well), the abusive dismissal of activists or members of their family...
Why this malicious ingenuity ? Merely to preserve the external image as “the world’s most beautiful country” while at the same time spreading a toxic climate of fear, suspicion, and denunciation. A selfish atmosphere of “everyone for himself” has gradually set in. The time is long gone when we chanted at the top of our lungs the revolutionary slogans of the 20 February (2011) movement. Nowadays, if you talk politics in a bus, people turn their backs ostentatiously. As a result, fear prevails everywhere in Morocco.
The case of Boualem Sansal
O.B.– Does the King’s poor health increase the power of his security entourage ?
M.M.– Yes, absolutely. Those around him have almost complete control over the power distribution network, they also monopolise the control of strategic information.
O.B.– How do you explain the fact that Boualem Sansal, the French-Algerian writer known for his close proximity to the far right in France, has the backing of all the French political and media elites, but you don’t5 ?
M.M.– The answer is simple: I am on the left, Sansal is on the far right. During the last few years there has been a massive drift of French society to the far right. Which explains the difference of treatment between the Sansal and Monjib cases. However a writer must never be jailed for his writings or his declarations. So I am demanding that Sansal be set free.
O.B.– Your case is not isolated. There are other political prisoners in Morocco. How do you explain the persistence of this phenomenon ?
M.M.– In Morocco we have a saying: “Drablekbir, ykhafsghir” (hit the big ones, and the little ones will be afraid). That is why there are always iconic figures in prison, like the famous attorney and former Minister of Human Rights, Mohamed Ziane. I could also name well-known Hirak al-Rif6 leaders, Nasser Zefzafi, Nahil Ahamjik and Mohamed Jelloul, as well as three others who have also been in jail for eight years now. Less well-known hirakis, hundreds of them in fact, were released after only a few days or a few months. All in all, it’s a rather commonplace control mechanism : show your muscles, so you don’t have to use them (much).
Translated from French by Noël Burch
1EDITOR’S NOTE: The consortium which won the project includes Afriquia Gaz, belonging to Aziz Akhannouch. The contract is estimated at around 6.5m dirhams (€623m).
2EDITOR’S NOTE: A gas liquefaction plant is being constructed at Tendrara, eastern Morocco, by the British company Sound Energy. The liquified gas will be distributed by Afriquia Gaz, sister company to the Moroccan group Akwa which belongs to the Akhannouch and Wakrim families. Aziz Akhannouch and Ali Wakrim have headed this family holding company since 1995.
3EDITOR’S NOTE: This investigation was published in May 2023 by the journalists Khalid Elberhli and Youssef El Hireche in the Arabic-language Moroccan paper Assihafa.
4EDITOR’S NOTE: Youssef El Hireche was arrested in 2024. He was accused of assaulting a public official, insulting an official body, and publishing private information without consent, following posts in social media. He was freed by royal pardon on 29 July 024.
5EDITOR’S NOTE: Boualem Sansal, aged 75 or 80 depending on the source, was arrested in Algeria in November 2024 and sentenced to five years imprisonment, apparently for suggesting that the French gave too much territory to Algeria and not enough to Morocco.
6EDITOR’S NOTE : The Hirak al-Rif uprising took place from October 2016 and June 2017 mainly in the Berber north of the country after a fisherman was crushed to death in a garbage truck while trying to retrieve his catch, confiscated as “illegal” by the authorities.