Recently, authorities barred historian and human rights activist Maati Monjib from leaving the country to travel to France, where he had been invited by Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University to deliver lectures, despite having received a royal pardon in July 2024. In this interview with Yabiladi, Monjib reflects on his legal and personal situation amid legal proceedings that have dragged on for years. He details the trajectory of his case and its impact on his daily and professional life. DR ‹ › How would you describe your current legal and personal situation? Despite its complexity, my situation can be summed up in one phrase: a state of «non-citizenship» that strips legal belonging of its meaning. The decisions affecting my fundamental rights and freedoms lack any solid legal basis. I was charged with money laundering without credible evidence, to the point that the investigating judge referred the case back to the public prosecutor due to a lack of proof, effectively exposing its weakness. Yet instead of being closed, the case was sent back to the investigating judge under the pretext of «deepening the investigation», as if the same accusation were being endlessly recycled without evidence. How can someone's life be put on hold while authorities search for proof to support an accusation? This goes against basic legal principles. It should be the opposite: a citizen remains free unless and until evidence is established. The core issue is not only the weakness of the case, but the complete standstill of both the investigation and the trial since early 2021, more than five years, in clear violation of the principle of a reasonable timeframe. As the saying goes, «neither married nor divorced, neither sick nor well», that is my situation. During this period, I have been living in a state of suspension: no work, no family stability, no right to travel, and with my assets and bank accounts frozen. This reflects a situation where the law is effectively set aside, even though judicial supervision measures are time-limited and should not exceed one year. The gap between legal texts and actual practice raises serious questions about the state's adherence to its own rules. This contradiction becomes even more striking in light of the royal pardon, which explicitly referenced the case tied to the charge of «threatening internal state security», the same charge used to justify my «temporary suspension» from work. Yet despite this, the Ministry of Higher Education has not reinstated me. This raises a fundamental question: are we dealing with a single decision-making authority, or with multiple, unacknowledged centers of power that may even override sovereign decisions? Is someone effectively ignoring the King's will to close the case? How do you assess the judicial proceedings in your case? It is difficult to speak of «progress» here. What we are seeing is stagnation, chronic stagnation. For more than five years, nothing has moved, as if judicial time itself has stopped. The impression is that judges are waiting for instructions from higher authorities, while those who initiated the case seem to have abandoned it or simply let it drift, lacking the institutional courage to formally close it. How have these proceedings affected your daily and professional life? Speaking of «daily life» in this context is almost symbolic. What we are facing is a complete breakdown of the basic conditions for normal social existence: no family stability, no steady employment, unstable, or at times nonexistent, income, and restrictions on freedom of movement. There has also been sustained defamation, with thousands of articles published each year, and the distancing of many former friends and colleagues. One positive aspect, however, has been the support of new friends who stepped forward, many of them prominent intellectuals and opposition figures. I am sincerely grateful for their solidarity. As human rights activist Khadija Ryadi described in a statement to Le Monde, the aim of such pressure, harassment, economic suffocation, and symbolic destruction, is to produce a slow «social death». This is an accurate description of the situation, where repression is not always direct but unfolds through prolonged, gradual exhaustion. Have you received official explanations regarding measures such as the travel ban? There is a clear lack of institutional transparency. Official responses tend to shift responsibility from one authority to another without providing any clear justification, deepening the sense of legal uncertainty. How have these proceedings affected your academic and research work? There is no doubt that this situation has significantly limited my academic work. Still, I have tried to maintain a degree of continuity by translating books, publishing some research, and giving lectures at foreign universities, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. That said, it remains a difficult path, especially after more than fifteen years without regularly using English, which has made returning to it particularly demanding. Anglo-Saxon universities, however, seem to be among the few that offer fair compensation for online lectures. How do you see the outcome of this case? At this stage, there is no clear horizon. The case hangs over me like a «Sword of Damocles», a constant source of pressure. It seems the objective was never to reach a judicial resolution, but rather to immobilize and exhaust the person concerned, a goal that has largely been achieved. In what way? This situation has also disrupted broader human rights and civic initiatives, including efforts to build dialogue between secular and Islamic currents within a pluralistic democratic framework. Such initiatives appear to be perceived by the authorities as an existential threat, a red line. In my view, this reflects a lack of strategic foresight. The legitimacy crisis facing the regime, in its various forms, can only be addressed through genuine democratic openness: moving beyond exclusion, restoring meaningful political participation, and reconsidering external policy choices that fuel public discontent, such as normalization with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
