Moroccan Christian Serving 15 Years for Faith

jacob — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:30:46 +0000

Jamaa Ait Bakrim, prisoner number 26574, is currently in Prison Centrale, located in Kenitra, Morocco. He has been there since 2005 when he was sentenced to 15 years for “proselytism” and “destruction of goods of others.” “This second charge is a common legal tactic of creating a separate infraction to lengthen the sentence and shift attention from the actual issue of religion,” said a Moroccan Christian whose name is withheld for security reasons. The charge of proselytization is derived from Article 220 of Moroccan Criminal Law which makes it illegal to “shake the faith of a Muslim.” “The charge of ‘proselytization’ is a specific concern because the wide range of applications that are used to suppress other religions,” stated the Moroccan source. This is the same official charge that has led to the deportation of many foreigners from Morocco in the past three months. In 1993 Jamaa returned to his Moroccan village after a trip to Europe where he converted to Christianity. In 1994 he spent seven months in the mental hospital of Inezgane for proselytizing. In 1996 he was condemned to one year, this time in jail, for putting up a Christian cross in public. In 2001 he was prosecuted again, leading to the current sentence he has been serving since 2005.

Sound Doctrine Church » Morocco

Moroccan Christian Serving 15 Years for Faith