HIBAPRESS
The Public Prosecution at the Primary Court of Rabat denied the allegations published by the "Agence France-Presse" regarding the Senegalese detainees on the backdrop of the events that marked the final of the African Cup of Nations 2025 entering a hunger strike.
The Attorney General at the Primary Court of Rabat said in a statement that the allegations of Senegalese detainees on the backdrop of the events of the African Cup of Nations final entering a hunger strike is "incorrect news", clarifying that the concerned parties "benefit from the meals provided by the institution regularly and consistently". This clarification came after a foreign news agency published a news snippet claiming that the Senegalese detainees in Morocco, on the backdrop of the riots that marked the "CAN 2025" final, had entered a hunger strike in protest against "the delay in deciding their case, in which they were followed, and the failure to use an interpreter during their interrogation." The Attorney General's statement regarding the postponement of the defendants' case to the court session which will be held on 12-02-2026, explained that "the first session in which their case was included was on 22/01/2026, it was postponed to the session of 29/01/2026 based on their request for a period to prepare their defense, and after including the case file in the session of 29/01/2026, it was postponed because they insisted on the presence of their defense, where the court adjourned the discussion of their case to the session of 05-02-2025, which saw the presence of a lawyer on their behalf from the bar association in France." The statement added that the French lawyer, was not "accompanied by the lawyer who has a place to communicate with him in Morocco, where the case file was postponed to the session of 12-02-2026, based on their insistence, without exception, on the presence of their defense, and their request to the court for a period to enable them to do so," noting that "the aforementioned lawyer communicated with the Senegalese detainees directly in French and informed them of the date of the file's delay according to their request submitted to the court." Regarding the presence of an interpreter to perform translation during the trial session, the statement pointed out that "the trial sessions were attended by a sworn translator appointed by the court to translate what happened in the mentioned sessions into French, which is understood and spoken by all the detainees in question without exception," continuing in the context of "the claim related to the preparation of interrogation records for the concerned parties by the judicial police without the use of an interpreter" that "the provisions of Article 21 of the Criminal Procedure Law do not require the use of an interpreter if the officer supervising the preparation of the interrogation record knows how to communicate in the language understood by the person being interrogated." In this context, the statement clarified that "the interrogation records prepared for all the mentioned detainees indicated the statement of reading and translating the content of the record prepared for the person being interrogated, which means that what was published in the mentioned media outlet is devoid of truth."
