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A Moroccan court docket has sharply elevated the jail sentences handed down in opposition to three males convicted of “indecent assault” for the repeated rape of an 11-year-old woman in a case that sparked public outrage.
The appeals court docket in Rabat, Morocco‘s capital, sentenced one man to twenty years in jail early Friday and the opposite two to 10.
Attorneys for the woman, who’s now 12, had appealed after a decrease court docket sentenced considered one of her three alleged attackers to 2 years in jail, and the others to 18 months every.
All three may have confronted as much as 30 years behind bars.
The appeals court docket ordered the three males to pay damages totalling 140,000 dirhams (practically $14,000) as an alternative of the 50,000 dirhams ordered by the decrease court docket.
“We’re glad with the choice which delivered justice to the sufferer,” lawyer Abdelfattah Zahrach informed AFP after the marathon listening to.
“That mentioned, we don’t perceive why two of the accused have been solely sentenced to 10 years,” he mentioned, including that he was contemplating an additional enchantment to the Courtroom of Cassation “after consulting the kid’s household”.
The court docket had heard testimonies from the sufferer and a witness, additionally a minor, in non-public after the prosecution requested it, citing youngster safety issues.
The general public gallery was packed for Thursday’s listening to, which ran on into the early hours of Friday.
The sufferer, trying frail and silent, was accompanied by her grandmother and father.
The defendants confronted the identical costs as within the unique trial – “misappropriation of a minor” and “indecent assault on a minor with violence”.
The prosecution requested that “rape” be added to the fees, a request rejected by the decide.
The accused hung their heads within the dock because the proof was introduced.
One of many males was confronted with a DNA check proving that he’s the daddy of a now 13-month-old youngster born to the woman.
Requested how this occurred, he repeatedly mentioned, “I do not know.”
The case has brought on an uproar within the North African nation, and a petition condemning the March 20 sentences has amassed tens of hundreds of signatures.
The woman, from a village close to Rabat, was raped repeatedly over a number of months, the Jossour Discussion board of Moroccan Girls mentioned in an announcement final month.
Amina Khalid, head of INSAF, a girls’s rights group which has adopted the woman’s case, mentioned she “is beginning to smile a bit however she continues to be in shock”.
INSAF has helped the woman go to high school for the primary time.
(AFP)
