The French Committee in support of prisoners of conscience in Morocco denounced the "illegal" transfer of journalist Omar Radi, arbitrarily sentenced, to another prison in Tiflet, and described this decision as "pure revenge", calling for his "immediate" release and "unconditionally".
In a press release, issued on Tuesday, the Committee recalls that after receiving an unfair six-year imprisonment, a heavy sentence handed down on 3 March 2022 by the Casablanca Court of Appeal in two cases jointly investigated and condemned by various human rights organizations, the young investigative journalist Omar Radi has just been subjected to "a second sentence" from the Prison Administration.
Without notice and without informing his family and lawyers, the Prison Administration decided on 2 April to transfer Omar Radi to Tiflet prison, known, according to the source, by its "overcrowding and its abhorrent and inhuman conditions".
Before proceeding with this forced transfer, "certainly decided elsewhere", according to the committee, the management of the Okacha prison in Casablanca, where he was detained, confiscated all his correspondence, notebooks and writings, it is reported.
"To the suffering of the deprivation of liberty and isolation is added that of the deportation inflicted by the Prison Administration on Omar Radi and his family. This double punishment is tantamount to a pure revenge that the French Committee for Support of Prisoners of Conscience in Morocco strongly condemns," it writes.
For the committee, "nothing can justify this transfer away from his family and his lawyers, most of whom report to the Casablanca Bar. There is also no justification for moving him away from the hospital where he was being followed for his Crohn’s disease."
"But unfortunately, nothing is surprising in this punitive decision on the part of a penitentiary administration that has distinguished itself through the political-its Director-General’s media reports and its bias in the latest cases concerning independent journalists and human rights defenders. Far from being an integration administration as it claims, it is the armed arm that prolongs the vengeance of the judicial machine that falls on any citizen critical of justice, of freedoms and demanding rights. This is how she trampled on, among other things, Omar Radi’s right to continue his studies", we can read in the same press release.
The deportation of the latter "sadly reminds us of others, all equally reprehensible, that the prison administration practised against other political and opinion prisoners in Morocco," it adds.
It says in the document that Omar Radi’s case is still before the Casablanca Court of Cassation. This transfer therefore constitutes "a flagrant double infringement, first on the right of access of the family and then on the rights of the defence since his lawyers, like his family, will have all the trouble to travel to prepare his defence".
Condemning this deportation decision, the committee assures that without the "immediate and unconditional" release of Omar Radi, it will "not abandon this path of solidarity".
Like other local and international human rights organizations, Amnesty International has condemned the transfer of Omar Radi. According to the NGO, "the Moroccan authorities continue to persecute the journalist even though he is serving his prison sentence after an unfair trial".
"He was transferred without justification in the first days of Ramadan from Casablanca to Tiflet prison, 160 km from his family and his defence team," said the organization.
