It is now decided. The mitigating circumstances that many rapists of minors have benefited from in recent years will soon be abolished. This was affirmed by the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, Monday in the House of Representatives. This decision comes in the wake of the case of the first verdict relating to the affair of the little girl from Tiflet which had shaken Moroccan public opinion.
Responding to a question from the Haraki group during the session of oral questions in the House of Representatives, on the reduced sentences for the rape of a minor, the Minister of Justice announced a decision awaited by Moroccans. ” NOTWe have decided to abolish the mitigating circumstances for the rape of a minor. This makes no sense and no reason to exist. Therefore, no possibility of reducing the sentences against the rapists“said Abdellatif Ouahbi.
” Child victims of rape have no right to compromise and their parents have no right to drop the case when it comes to their children’s rights“, he decided, therefore refusing all the arrangements made in favor of pedophile rapists, who until now had several ways of avoiding the maximum penalties provided for by law.
In addition, to monitor and support minor victims of rape, whether they are girls and their babies or boys, Ouahbi specified that his department was working with the Ministry of Solidarity, Social Integration and the Family to develop a vision for the creation of shelters for victims.
” The associations are there to support these victims, but this may not be done over time. In order not to risk leaving these children abandoned, the ministry is working on a vision, with the family department, to create accommodation centers all over Morocco.“, he pointed out.
As a reminder, the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, was among the many people who reacted and expressed their surprise at the initial verdict at first instance in the case of the repeated gang rape of the little girl from Tiflet by 3 adults. , which had led to a pregnancy.
For this, he had promised a severe penalty for the crimes of rape of a minor in the new penal code which must be revised in line with the real and new realities of Moroccan society.
” The tragedy of this little girl’s rape was a real thunderclap, hence the need to question all the efforts made in this direction, as leaders, as actors and as civil society. “, he had said previously.
Ouahbi had notably let it be known that his department is relentlessly determined to toughen the penalties provided for in the new draft Penal Code, with the aim of protecting children against rape, drug use and other violence and abuses to which they could be submitted.
The case of the little girl from Tiflet created a stir in Morocco when it was discovered and anger during the first judgment handed down by the courts, which pronounced 2 years in prison as the maximum sentence for the rapist whose act had led to the pregnancy of the girl of 11 years and 10 months of suspended prison sentence for the two other adults, whereas the sorrows envisaged go up to 20 years of imprisonment.
Cases of rape of minors frequently shake up public opinion without the verdicts of justice being up to the level of the crimes committed or the expectations of society. They had caused a wave of major indignation when the young Amine El Filali, raped at 15, committed suicide by swallowing rat poison, when justice ordered her to marry her rapist.