Morocco: from one repression to another
BarcelonaHow does an authoritarian regime like Morocco's survive? Through repression. When it falters at the slightest shock, it resorts to what it knows best to silence any serious opposition or any it considers dangerous: first it tries to buy loyalties and, if that doesn't yield results, it brings out the truncheon, imprisons, or, on some occasions in the past, kills. And that is how it has been since the beginning of Morocco's independence in 1956.
During the terrible popular uprising in Casablanca in 1965, King Hassan II did not hesitate for a minute to unleash his brutal army against his own people. He massacred them. Thousands dead. Immediately afterwards, he sent Commander Ahmed Dlimi to Paris to kidnap and assassinate the monarchy's main opponent, Mehdi Ben Barka, with the efficient help of the Israeli Mossad. Nothing was ever heard of the latter again, but for Dlimi, the doors of the army and the makhzen, the deep state, were thrown wide open, until he, in turn, was also assassinated like so many other coup-plotting military officers. They tortured and murdered him just as he himself had done to Ben Barka, and then they put his corpse in a car and declared that he had died in an unlikely accident in Marrakesh in 1983. The author of those tortures, who is now approaching 90 years old, still lives in Paris, and a few years ago he too suffered an assassination attempt in... Marrakesh.
In 1981, in Casablanca, the country's economic capital was once again decimated by the Moroccan army and the Royal Gendarmerie, and in January 1984 Morocco experienced the so-called bread riots in Marrakesh, Nador, Al-Hoceima, Tetouan, and other cities, all drowned by the supposedly patriotic fire of an army that should defend the country from external threats and not massacre its own people. Thousands and thousands of deaths, once again.
The new era of Mohammed VI
But the years of lead ended during the final years of the reign of an old, sick, and appeased Hassan II and with the beginning of another reign, that of Mohamed VI, in 1999. It is not that the new autocrat convinced with his new slogan of "New era", but rather that an idea was imposed that still remains in force today. In the era of the emergence of satellite television channels, CNN, Al-Jazeera, and others, it is better to tread carefully than to use the lead in the chamber. Our repression strategists came to the conclusion that the "riffraff" can and must be controlled with other, less lethal instruments. For this reason, the kingdom's different political police forces, already efficient enough, increased their personnel, invested in wiretapping devices, and perfected their methods of surveillance and harassment. And, to top it all off, they even created, with the excuse of the fight against "Islamist terrorism", a special tribunal located in Salé, the twin city of Rabat, and integrated by judges trained by them.
This experience served the political police to further tighten the siege on the Moroccan judiciary, so that no one, no judge, would deviate from the script on issues they consider taboo: the monarchy, the Western Sahara conflict, and Islam. It is not that the members of the Moroccan intelligence agencies are virtuous followers of Muhammad, but rather that they had to preserve appearances in an eminently Muslim country and spiritually commanded by a "commander of the faithful," a kind of caliph on Moroccan soil who cannot and must not tolerate theological or verbal nonsense against the official and majority religion of the Moroccans. Otherwise, the Islamists would take advantage of it to despise and ridicule this "commandery".
Everyone recognizes it. The role of the political police has been fundamental during the reign of Mohammed VI to repress social demonstrations in time: Sidi Ifni in 2008, Safi in 2011, Taza, Bni Bouayach, and Imzouren (Al-Hoceima) in 2012, Zagora in 2017, and Jerada in 2018. Without forgetting the biggest ones, those that have shaken the regime: the February 20th Movement, between 2011 and 2012, the Hirak of the Rif, between 2016 and 2017, and, recently, the GenZ 212 of 2025. All these legitimate and peaceful revolts have been suppressed without the intervention of the army, through individual promises of a juicy institutional life for the main leaders of these popular eruptions and, in case of refusal, with the old police tactics as always: intrusions into the private lives of dissidents, blackmail against them or their relatives, and implausible plots that lead directly to prison. This entire framework has been possible with the help of sophisticated espionage programs, such as Pegasus and many other applications, and with the powerful support of the State of Israel, which has trained Moroccan officials and agents in the art of surveillance and the persecution of dissidents. To the Moroccan dissidents who demand fundamental rights, the makhzen applied methods of surveillance and warfare from the Middle East. But killing, no. Except in one specific case. That of Lqliâa, a town near the tourist resort of Agadir, in the south of the country.
On the night of October 1st to 2nd, 2025, some young people from the GenZ 212 movement headed to the Royal Gendarmerie barracks, a militarized police force, to express their weariness. They were not carrying any kind of weapons. Only the rage of wanting to lash out at this symbol of state repression.
The gendarmes defended the entrance to their barracks, citing the safety of their families. A reaction that, to a certain extent, can be understood; but they went further. Some of the uniformed men went out into the street to hunt, literally, unarmed protesters. Three lives cut short by bullets fired to kill. The next day, aware of the disaster that the dissemination of the gendarmes' impetuous, exaggerated, and bloody reaction would mean for the country's image, the authorities searched the homes surrounding the barracks in search of uncomfortable videos. In vain. Soon, those unbearable images of gendarmes shooting indiscriminately at unarmed civilians in the street appeared on social media.
Some defenders of the political police boasted that their idols are different from the gendarmes. The political police do not kill in the street. And it is true that, unlike Lqliâa, the regime's response to protests, past and present, during this reign, has been played out mainly before complacent and highly monitored judges who are not very different from those of the famous special court of Salé.
The repression of the GenZ 212 movement
Regarding the repression of the GenZ 212 movement, the figures, communicated by the Moroccan justice system itself, speak for themselves: a minimum of 6,000 people detained during the protests, of whom more than 2,000 remain in prison. The charges brought—armed rebellion, participation in armed gatherings, possession of weapons, incitement to commit crimes, violence against law enforcement—are part of the state's classic repertoire against dissent. They are charges serious enough to justify prolonged detention and vague enough to be applied to almost anyone.
The first convictions, handed down rapidly, have imposed sentences totaling hundreds of years in prison; some, even more serious, against children under twelve years old. According to all available indicators, this is the harshest judicial repression of Mohamed VI's reign since his arrival on the throne in 1999.
On October 10, 2025, when the king addressed Parliament, the country expected, at the very least, a gesture toward the protest that had been shaking its streets for several weeks. There was not a single word about the movement. Two weeks later, a council of ministers presided over by the king approved an increase in health and education budgets, as well as a fund intended to support young candidates in the upcoming elections. Money in one hand, an invitation to institutional politics in the other, but no word about the dead and the detained, and no sign that the promises would translate into releases. The strategy is the same: replace the bullet with the budget and the judicial file, but keep the mechanism of intimidation intact.
Recently, the journalist and former prisoner of conscience Omar Radi investigated in detail, for the website Orient XXI, the Moroccan judicial machinery, and provided shocking information about a relatively unknown case. On the night of September 28, 2025, at Sraghna Square in Casablanca, a group of hooded individuals blocked an urban highway at the exit of the Derb Sultan neighborhood for half an hour. There was no violence, insults, or threats from the protesters. But twenty-four young people, including six minors between 14 and 17 years old, were arrested and imprisoned at Oukacha prison in Casablanca, accused of having participated in that blockade.
"Confessions" at the police station
The investigative file, of 170 pages, reveals a pattern: statements before the judicial police drafted with a suspicious uniformity, in which the detainees "confess" with a political vocabulary and a narrative coherence hardly credible in the mouths of adolescents or casual passersby; and radically different versions before the investigating judge, in which several of them describe precise alibis –an appointment at a shopping center, a tram stop, a hair salon– and denounce pressure to sign acts they were unable to read.
The investigating judge, Rachid Oussama, did not summon any of the defense witnesses mentioned by the accused, nor did he request the analysis of the geolocation data from the twenty phones confiscated by the police, even though they could have confirmed or refuted various alibis in a matter of minutes. The only material evidence provided is a surveillance video of only fifteen minutes, in which almost none of the accused are actually recognized. In at least two cases, the police steered the interrogations towards cannabis consumption or the detainees' religious convictions, as if it were, more than judging a road blockade, about conducting a moral trial against an entire generation.
This contrast, between the meager material entity of the acts they are accused of –half an hour of blocked traffic– and the disproportion of the criminal response –hundreds of years of accumulated prison time, imprisoned minors–, is perhaps the best illustration of the thesis of this analysis: the regime of Mohamed VI has not renounced repression, but has instead judicialized it. It no longer needs the army to fire against the crowd as in 1965, 1981, or 1984; it is enough to have a judicial police that manufactures standard confessions, a prosecutor's office that does not question these confessions, and investigating judges whose "intimate conviction" falls, systematically, on the side of the prosecution.