Background and Work

Jalal Bouchaab is a Sahrawi human rights defender focused on student rights and the documentation of abuses against Sahrawi activists. He is a member of the preparatory committee of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA), a network established to defend and promote the rights of the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara and the southern regions of Morocco.

His work centered on two core activities: denouncing the imprisonment of Sahrawi human rights defenders and documenting the activities and struggles of Sahrawi students. In a region where activism is met with surveillance, arrest, and prosecution, his documentation provided a record of repression that authorities sought to suppress.

The Arrest

On 9 September 2021, Jalal participated in a peaceful demonstration in Guelmim, a city in southern Morocco near the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Five days later, on 14 September 2021, he was arrested at his residence alongside two fellow CODESA members, Hamza Bouhriga and Jamal Ahrouch. All three were charged with unlawful assembly.

On 16 September 2021, Jalal and his co-defendants appeared before the prosecutor in Guelmim. Immediately following the hearing, they were transferred to Bouizakarne Prison in Guelmim province, where they were held in pre-trial detention.

Legal Proceedings

The prosecution of Jalal and his co-defendants has been characterized by procedural irregularities and poor conditions for the exercise of defense rights. On 4 November 2021, Hamza Bouhriga and Jamal Ahrouch attended a virtual session before the criminal chamber of the Guelmim court. The audio and video quality during the session was extremely poor, making it difficult for the defendants to hear the prosecutor and vice versa. Sahrawi defenders observed that such virtual sessions, increasingly used against Sahrawi political prisoners and human rights defenders, afford judges broad discretion in interpreting defendants' statements.

On 9 November 2021, the Guelmim Court of Appeal rescheduled the appeal hearing for Bouhriga and Ahrouch to 16 November 2021, at the request of their defense counsel. Jalal's case was scheduled to be heard before the Guelmim Court of First Instance on 15 November 2021.

The last available report, from November 2021, said Jalal remained in detention. The charges of unlawful assembly stem solely from his participation in a peaceful demonstration and his work documenting human rights violations in Western Sahara.

Pattern of Repression

The arrest and prosecution of Jalal Bouchaab, Hamza Bouhriga, and Jamal Ahrouch form part of a broader pattern of judicial harassment targeting Sahrawi human rights defenders. Charges of unlawful assembly, along with accusations under Morocco's anti-terrorism and cybercrime laws, are routinely used to criminalize peaceful activism and documentation work.

The use of poor-quality virtual court sessions, noted by Sahrawi defenders as an emerging tactic, undermines the right to a fair hearing and the ability of defendants to participate meaningfully in their own defense. These procedural deficiencies compound the substantive injustice of prosecuting individuals for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.