On 4 January 2016, Alkarama seized the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) with the case of Abdelkader Belliraj, a 59-year-old Belgian-Moroccan citizen sentenced by the Moroccan authorities to life imprisonment in 2009 on the sole basis of confessions obtained under torture - which is why his case was dismissed in Belgium in October 2013. By seizing the WGAD for a second time, Alkarama hopes that this UN mechanism for the protection of human rights establishes the arbitrary nature of the victim's deprivation of liberty that has lasted for eight years, and calls on the Moroccan authorities to take the necessary measures to release him.
Arbitrary arrest, secret detention and torture
...