DR ‹ › Morocco's Court of Cassation overturned the ruling in the case of Mohamed Ziane, Wednesday, and referred it back to the Court of Appeal for a fresh examination. Ziane, a former Minister of Human Rights, had initially been sentenced to five years in prison by the Primary Criminal Chamber. The Court of Appeal later reduced the sentence to three years, a decision that his defense subsequently challenged before the Court of Cassation. With this ruling, Ziane's case—while he remains detained at Al-Arjat 1 Prison—returns to the appeal stage and will be reviewed by a different judicial panel. The proceedings stem from a complaint filed by the current leadership of the Moroccan Liberal Party, headed by Isaac Charia, against Ziane and two other members. The complaint followed requests from the Ministry of the Interior regarding the recovery of public funding allocated to the party in 2015, which authorities said had not been properly spent. Separately, Ziane previously served a three-year prison sentence beginning in 2022 after being prosecuted by the Ministry of the Interior on charges including insulting the judiciary and public officials, insulting organized bodies, defamation, and harassment.
