By Ahmed Eljechtimi
RABAT (Reuters) – A Moroccan appeals court on Tuesday increased a jail sentence to one year against Moroccan activist Said Ait Mehdi, who led protests criticizing the government response to a devastating earthquake in September 2023, his lawyer said.
Ait Mehdi, who had been sentenced to three months in a first instance verdict, stood the trial behind bars on charges including spreading fake news and defamation in a lawsuit filed by local authority officials.
The 6.8 magnitude earthquake, Morocco’s deadliest since 1960, killed more than 2,900 people and damaged vital infrastructure in the Atlas Mountains. It destroyed many hamlets with traditional mud brick, stone and wood houses, specific to the Amazigh-speaking Atlas Mountains.
Ait Mehdi is the leader of a group of quake victims which denounced dysfunction in aid distribution.
The verdict “will deepen the wounds and the suffering of the victims who undergo severe climate conditions of snowfall, rain, and cold, following the September 8 earthquake of 2023 and who are still sleeping in plastic tents,” Ait Mehdi’s lawyer Mohamed El Ghalloussi told Reuters.
Earthquake victims have been receiving 2,500 dirhams ($250) per household, and 35,214 homes are being made ready, according to a prime minister’s statement in December.
On the first anniversary of the earthquake, the government said only 1,000 homes were rebuilt out of 57,000 destroyed in the quake.
Overall, Morocco plans to spend 120 billion dirhams on a post-earthquake reconstruction plan that includes the upgrade of infrastructure over the next five years.
Economic losses from the quake accounted for 0.24% of Morocco’s GDP in 2023, or 3 billion dirhams, according to a study by the Policy Center for the New South.
(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi)
