Morocco: Sham inquiry highlights impunity for police abuse

Citing "lack of evidence," Moroccan authorities closed an investigation into police abuse allegations made by two human rights defenders whose testimony the prosecutor refused to solicit, Human Rights Watch has said. The two Sahrawi human rights advocates, Dahha Rahmouni and Brahim al-Ansari, say that, in December 2007, police in the city of El-Ayoun, in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, arbitrarily arrested and beat them before releasing them without charge.