Hizb-ut-Tahrir detainees face Moroccan trial

Three detainees of the Islamist Hizb-ut-Tahrir movement will stand Thursday before a court of appeal in Casablanca, on charges of belonging to a "subversive international organisation". A statement from the organisation said that certain media tried to exaggerate the charges of the detainees to influence public opinion into accepting the arrest of people "whose sole accusation was holding political beliefs that differed from those propagated by the state at a time when that state claims that it’s working according to a new constitution that provides a larger margin of freedoms and severs past practices based on suppressing expression and arresting members of the opposition simply for being in the opposition".  The statement added that after the authorities failed to justify the accusations, they fabricated other charges saying that the movement's members were receiving foreign funds. Yet this charge, according to the Hizb-ut-Tahrir statement, “was soon proved void as the defendant proved with documents that he has a contract with a foreign informatics company, and that the money transferred to him was only his fee for the services provided to the employer”. The same source addressed a message to the Minister of Justice Mustafa Al-Ramid saying that “having formerly defended some of these youth, and closely viewed their good manners and sublime ideas, how can he be their opponent today? For what guilt is he questioning them while [he] claimed that there are no prisoners of opinion in Morocco?  Three Hizb-ut-Tahrir members had been arrested on February 4 on charges of “belonging to a Hizb-ut-Tahrir cell, categorised as sabotage organisation of an international character”. The detainees faced charges of “implementing a scheme that undermines security and stability in the country by recruiting a large number of followers and promoting their nihilist thought through distributing a number of leaflets in several Moroccan cities, raising suspicions around the effectiveness of the democratic path and inciting sedition.”