Moroccan police clash with protesters demanding release of activist

Moroccan riot police have clashed with anti-government demonstrators in a town in the northern Rif region, which has been hit by angry rallies against the detention of a prominent protest leader over the past week.

According to reports, the scuffles broke out on Friday after hundreds of young people started hurling rocks and trash at police in Imzouren, a town 450 kilometers northeast of the Moroccan capital, Rabat.

Police fired water cannon to disperse the angry crowd protesting against corruption, repression and unemployment.

It was not immediately clear whether any demonstrators or police had been injured in the unrest.

The clashes came after Nasser Zefzafi, who emerged as the leader of the protesters’ Popular Movement, was arrested last week and charged with threatening national security, among other offences.

In the port city of al-Hoceima, where Zefzafi was apprehended after three days on the run, most shops were shuttered for the second day of a general strike on Friday.

Hoceima, a city of 56,000 inhabitants in the neglected Rif region, has been the scene of social unrest since last year, when a local fisherman was crushed in a refuse truck as he was trying to retrieve his merchandise confiscated by police.

The fishmonger, Mouhcine Fikri, was killed in October 2016, when a garbage compactor he had climbed into started operating. He was seeking to stop police from destroying 500 kilograms of swordfish that they had seized from him and had thrown into the truck

Also on Friday, protesters took to the streets of Hoceima for an eighth straight, chanting slogans such as “We are all Zefzafi,” while holding pictures of the protest leader.

SS