A tougher crackdown on environmental crimes is looming in Morocco. The integration request to the network of European environmental prosecutors has been approved, making Morocco its observer member.
Morocco thus becomes the very first African country to benefit from the status of observer member of the network of European environmental prosecutors. Thanks to this status, Moroccan magistrates will benefit from several advantages: a strengthening of capacities to deal with environmental questions, the development of knowledge in environmental law and in environmental criminal law, an exchange of experiences in matters of investigations, prosecutions and sanctions in criminal environmental law…
Some environmental crimes are punishable by death
For the Moroccan authorities, this membership in the network of European environmental prosecutors was motivated by the kingdom’s advances in the field of the suppression of environmental crimes.In Morocco, although the constitutional texts do not mention the environment, the legislations were gradually constituted to respond to the multiple attacks and to ensure the protection of the environment: marine pollution, deforestation, coastal erosion, etc. As for criminal law, it is being updated to take into account, in particular the management of water and waste. This is how in this criminal law, repressive provisions are sometimes dissuasive, sometimes extremely severe, because, they can go as far as the death penalty. “The culprit is punished with death when the facts resulted in the death of one or more people,” said Saâd Moummi, the president of the criminal environmental law chamber at the Supreme Court of Morocco.The network of European environmental prosecutors was created on June 1, 2012 in Amiens, a city in the north of France. Established as an association under Belgian law, the main objective of the network is to promote international criminal legal assistance in the environmental field.
Boris Ngounou